Fashion: a right, not a luxury?

            In light of all of the depressing posts lately, I thought I’d try to brighten the mood a little this time. What better way to do that than to talk about something that everyone loves – cute clothing at cheap prices? The rise of designer lines for big chain stores like Target and Kohl’s has kept me excited for the release of a new collection every few months since the beginning of 2006.  

            The first introduction I had to this phenomenon was in January 2006 with the Luella Bartley for Target collection that launched their Go International line, now on its sixteenth designer, Tracy Feith. I remember buying a pair of obnoxiously large sunglasses that were popular that season and a tote with a cherry design that I carried around for months… until I decided that it looked too young for me and gave it to my little sister. But that’s the beauty of these collections: the items are cheap, so when the trend moves on you can too, without much guilt.

            The lines’ cheap prices also make fashion available to a larger part of the population. Sarah Jessica Parker’s Bitten collection for the now-bankrupt Steve and Barry’s chain summarized the sentiment best with its motto: “Fashion is a right, not a luxury.”

            I love the idea of making fashion accessible to more people and I certainly have benefited from the lines’ creation, but I do wonder if the collections really do as much good as they suggest. For starters, how do the companies make their clothes so cheap? Is it simply a matter of mass production and cheaper fabric, or is it possible that the clothes are being made using sweatshop labor in some developing country? I tried to figure out where the clothing from the Go International line came from, but unfortunately couldn’t find anything.

            The other thing that got me thinking, and I know I’m being more than a bit hypocritical since I just praised it two paragraphs ago, is the disposability of the items. Fashion is an industry that strives to constantly be in motion, to be shifting and evolving and coming up with new ideas all the time. Naturally, the popularity of trendy clothing is lost just as quickly as it is gained. Still, with all of today’s environmental concerns, is now really the time to be encouraging mass consumption of temporary objects? Should we instead focus on buying classic, longer-lasting pieces at higher prices but with much longer lifespans? As a broke but environmentally conscious college student with an interest in fashion and all of its trends, I’m not even quite sure how I’d answer this question…

More designer lines for cheap: 

-Vera Wang for Kohl's, Converse OneStar for Target, Miss Trish of Capri for Target, Felix Ray for Target, Erickson Beamon for Target