Are Affordable Lines Comparable to Their Higher End Equivalents?

From The Wall Street Journal:

Recession-scarred retailers are turning to collections of cheap-but-chic designer clothing to lure customers who love fashion but are watching their pennies. Designers, hit by the collapse in luxury sales, are eager to sign on.

Are their outfits just flimsy knock-offs — or a good deal for value-conscious shoppers? We decided to see if the experts could separate cheap-chic clothes from expensive-chic clothes.

Target Corp. spearheaded the cheap-chic movement almost a decade ago, introducing affordable versions of expensive housewares created by top designers such as Michael Graves. A few years later, it signed Isaac Mizrahi to create stylish clothing and accessories that appeared in its stores until the end of last year.

In 2004, Hennes & Mauritz SA’s H&M chain took the concept further, getting big-name designers to create less-expensive clothing collections for several hundred of its stores — items that frequently sold out in hours. Target came back in 2006 with Go International, which sold a limited array of apparel from up-and-coming designers for 45 days at a time.

Now everybody seems to be on board. In the past few months, J.C. Penney Co. introduced I Ronson, a street-chic line by downtown New York designer Charlotte Ronson; Wal-Mart Stores Inc. rolled out a Norma Kamali line featuring $20 jersey wrap dresses; and fast-fashion retailer Uniqlo, a Japanese-based chain with a Manhattan outpost, just signed minimalist luxury designer Jil Sander.

But experts say that shoppers today, while still interested in fashion, are equally focused on clothes that are well made and whose style and construction will last more than a season. Shoppers are turning to “value and a longer shelf life,” says David Wolfe, creative director of Doneger Group, a fashion forecast and consulting company.

So what exactly are shoppers getting in terms of quality, style and construction? We asked Simon Collins, dean of fashion at Parsons The New School for Design, and Randi Rahm, a designer based in Manhattan, to analyze items from recent designer collections from Target and H&M — and one expensive designer outfit we bought at Barneys New York.

WSJ’s general findings were that the Target pieces were relatively well-constructed for the price and consistent design-wise with the higher end versions of the labels, and that the H&M items were similarly well-designed but poorly made (surprise, surprise).

Eh, good style is good style, regardless of the cost. As I’ve mentioned before, design isn’t so much the issue with these affordable lines as is the quality and ethics behind the garments’ construction.

Dress photo credit: Target