'Cheap-Chic' More-Readily Available

Rock star Avril Lavigne, the singer with raccoon eyeliner and skull-and-hearts style, is about to start selling a clothing line at Kohl's Corp., the traditional discount department store from Wisconsin that has been dabbling in trendier fashion. The deal, announced last week, would have been unfathomable five years ago, before Isaac Mizrahi teamed with Target Corp. to make discount shopping cool. Now it's just the latest iteration in the swelling establishment of cheap chic. While the idea of marketing trendy apparel and home goods to the masses—an idea pioneered at Target—has been building for years, the cheap chic phenomenon is seeping into everything from candles to bath towels to baby blankets to lamps, and bringing together such unlikely combinations as Wal-Mart and Norma Kamali.It is also presenting a headache for Target, whose sales have stalled since late last year. It's hard to say how much of the slowdown is a result of the economy and how much reflects rivals' latching onto Target's model. "Target used to offer sophisticated design at a low-price, and now everybody else is getting closer to that," said David Wolfe, creative director at Doneger Group, a New York-based fashion merchandising firm. "Everybody else is pushing the fashion envelope. It's hard to find ugly cheap stuff." Retailers who in the past wouldn't have had access to style icons are now wooing designers and celebrities to create product lines for the mass market. Fast-fashion retailer H&M, a relative newcomer to the U.S., rolled out a line from Madonna last year and in November sold limited-edition collections from such designers as Roberto Cavalli. Steve & Barry's, the purveyor of college sports team apparel, hired "Sex in the City" actress Sarah Jessica Parker to create its Bitten line where every item is under $20. Even Wal-Mart Stores Inc., known best for low prices, recruited designer Kamali last week to create an in-house lifestyle brand that will span clothing to housewares. Before landing Lavigne, Kohl's recruited luxury designer, Vera Wang. "There is a great tectonic shift in the ability to hold objects that used to be held by the very rich," said James Twitchell, an English professor and mass culture guru at the University of Florida in Gainesville. "There is almost nothing a rich person has that you can't also have." A generation ago, [this] would have been impossible. Fashion expert John Mincarelli recalls in the late 1970s when iconic designer Halston sold his label to Penneys and created Halston III, one of the first cheap chic lines. The deal marked the beginning of the end for Halston. Luxury retailers such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman stopped carrying his collection. Women shunned the notion of wearing a high-priced Halston gown when the masses could find his name on labels at a mainstream store. Decades ago, if you bought cheap clothes they would never be considered 'in-fashion.' Such thinking began to shift about the time actress Sharon Stone paired a black Gap turtleneck with a black silk crepe Valentino skirt for the 1996 Academy Awards, setting off a wave of high-low fashion combos. Now fashionistas tout their ability to mix an $18 Target T-shirt with a $3,500 Akris suit.
(Sourced from ChicagoTribune.com)