When Women’s Wear Daily features ‘Cheap Week’ as a branded theme, that’s a sure sign of the times. Rosemary Feitelberg writes Frugality in Fashion Amidst Economic Slump:

While restrained spending has always gone hand-in-hand with a shaky economy, now, more than ever, Americans are bragging about their rock-bottom fashion finds.

Really? I’ve been doing that with my friends since the 80s. Apparently cheap chic has gone fully mainstream. And ‘fast fashion’ outlets are all too happy to provide alternatives to the traditional department store outlets.

Forever 21 - Times Square flagship store from Sugar Rock Catwalk

While the average American may not be glued to London’s FTSE or Japan’s Nikkei, he or she is more inclined to acknowledge the reality of his or her own financial situation. At Forever 21’s new 90,000-square-foot Times Square flagship Friday with her teenage daughter, Donna Georgio said she is definitely shopping at stores such as Marshalls and TJ Maxx more than Bloomingdale’s like she used to. “Part of it is due to clothes being too expensive and I’m afraid of losing my job or getting into debt,” she said. “I’m 50 years old. I’ve had all the clothes and have gone from having Audis and BMWs to a Volkswagen. My priorities have changed. But I can still hook it up and look good.”

What is interesting to note is that nowhere in this article does Feitelberg mention, even in passing, the essentially slave labor necessary in this race to the rock bottom price. Not that designer labels are above exploitation, mind you. It’s just that, ironically enough, the big names have been the target of enough high profile anti-sweatshop campaigns to force them to implement at least minimal supervision of their subcontractors. But the Forever 21 customer is highly unlikely to care about much beyond getting that trendy dress for $12.

Consumers have plenty of reasons to be frugal and will keep trading down and saving money for years to come, according to Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates Inc., a New York-based retail and consulting banking firm. “People are looking for value and the consumer mind-set has changed forever. All you have to do is look at what’s going on with Mango, Zara and H&M [financially],” he said. “The most dramatic example is Japan. I have a home there. It used to be the biggest place for luxury [shopping]. Everything has changed there because the standard of living is declining and that’s what is going on here.”

W. David Marx noted this shift in Japan back in 2008 at Businessoffashion.com in a blog post titled Japanese Women: From Luxury to Yuru Nachu:

Just five years ago, the Japanese luxury market looked like it was headed for an era of permanent dominance. The economy had finally started to uptick after a long decade of recession in Japan. In came a relatively-unprecedented New Rich — mostly, internet millionaires and employees at foreign investment banks — who ushered a wealth-obsessed zeitgeist into the popular culture. Conspicuous consumption was in.

As an analogue to this movement, female style gravitated away from the street fashion of the 1990s to a style called O-nee-kei (“big sister style”), popular among mainstream females in their early twenties. The O-nee-kei girls were convinced that the only chance at future happiness was a rich suitor, and the bibles of this fashion movement — magazines CanCam and JJ — told them exactly how to dress in order to snag a man in a decent income bracket. The styling was mostly cute office conservative, but instead of designer fashion like in the 1990s, the clothes came mostly from cheap domestic labels. Handbags, however, needed to be from Louis Vuitton or Gucci, and jewelry meant Tiffany, Bulgari, and Cartier. The bling was all in the accesssories.

These O-nee-kei girls would not think for a microsecond about Parisian mode. In fact, these girls started to openly preach a love of “real clothes” — a term to describe inexpensive, trendy apparel from exclusively Japanese companies, mostly designed by young women the same age as customers. Although CanCam‘s focus on looking “classy” to attract rich men kept the luxury handbag on the menu, the “real clothes” rhetoric of “unreal foreign fashion labels vs. real Japanese brands” offered omens of wide-scale luxury rejection.

Ah ha. Keep the easily recognizable status symbol, but skimp on the quality couture clothing that the men they were chasing didn’t care about, anyway. What happens, however, when the supply of rich young men dries up with a global recession? While some girls just step up their game, all too many decide to play a different one.

Yuru Nachu style featured on Businessoffashion.com. W.David Marx photograph

With the less robust economy and a visible rise of underpaid young workers, the New Rich Pageant of 2003 has gone out with a whimper, making the princess-y O-nee-keilook appear somewhat shallow. In this recession-adjusted cultural atmosphere, everyone wants inexpensive, low pressure, and comfortable clothing. This year has thus seen the rise of the Yuru Nachu (“relaxed, natural”) style, which could be a long-term challenge to previous luxury attitudes. This “fashion ethic” is based on relaxed silhouettes, muted colours, and layering organic textiles. From loose “Bohemian” flower print dresses to off-white linen tunics, young women from all taste and consumer subcultures have embraced some variation of this fashion look.

Although Yuru Nachu reflects many of the global industry’s spring trends, the look has succeeded wildly thanks to its ability to connect with young women’s need for a less consumerist take on fashion. Out with the exclusive leather handbag, and in with the $12 “eco bag.”

When the cheap canvas tote replaces the Louis Vuitton as the anti-status status symbol, something is afoot. Back to WWD:

“If you look back at the boom years, a lot of that spending was accessed through credit. Debt-fueled affluence or aspirational consumerism is going to be challenged to return and is not about to get us back to where we were.”

Needless to say, he is not counting on shoppers to start spending more freely anytime soon. “From a big-picture macroeconomic standpoint, we are expecting a very sluggish recovery in the economy that is probably not conducive to consumers waking up one day feeling a lot better about everything and willing to spend again,” said Tuhy

This is bad news for big name ‘luxury’ brands that depended on the aspirational consumer to provide the bread and butter by overpaying for logo laden bags cranked out in third world factories.

“Conspicuous consumption is not very chic right now,” Christopher said. That behavior is counter to the Veblen effect, named after economist Thorstein Veblen, who first noted that decreasing the value of high-end goods only decreases people’s interest in buying them, he added.

Obviously Veblen wasn’t around long enough to witness The Gilt Groupe website. What’s different about now versus Veblen’s Victorian age is that the ‘democratization of fashion’ has 21st century ‘aspirational’ (translate - can’t really afford it but buy it anyway) consumers going after the same luxury brands as the actually rich, which in the long run turns into a cannibalistic effect of sorts. Decreasing the price doesn’t necessarily increase the interest - for it’s safe to assume that, by definition, far more people are interested in these items than can afford them - but instead increases the accessibility of the brand. Which will, in time, decrease the interest of the truly rich who establish the status of the item in the first place.

Consumers are kidding themselves if they think fast fashion distinguishes them from the masses, said Ellen Ruppel Shell, author of “Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture.” Topshop may have certain status for being London based and the same might be said of the Swedish chain H&M, but the reality is that neither is all that different from Wal-Mart, she said. “Frugal chic is kind of a label in itself now. But I would argue that we are deluding ourselves. These goods are mass produced, sold all over the world, available to everyone and they don’t involve a lot of creativity,” Shell said. “Truly fashionable people are able to go to thrift stores to find something stylish.”

Yes! Count me amongst the truly fashionable, then.

Oh please let it be true. Susannah Frankel writes for The Independent, New model army: Why fashion has fallen out of love with its A-list clotheshorses:

The symbiotic relationship between fashion and celebrity, as seen everywhere from the red carpet to an increasingly sophisticated print media, has been the most ubiquitous and, it almost goes without saying, money-spinning phenomenon of the era. That is, until now.

This time last year – and as presciently as ever – the Prada Group sent out a press release to accompany the launch of its new women’s wear campaign for Miu Miu stating, in the opening paragraph, that it marked “the return of the model as opposed to the celebrity” to fashion’s most hallowed frontline. Shot by the super-fashionable duo Mert Alas and Marcus Pigott, the images established just that, featuring an array of painstakingly sought-out new models remarkable for their fresh personalities and entirely unrecognisable faces.

In February this year – in a move that was equally unprecedented – Marc Jacobs very publicly rid his catwalk show’s front row of the formerly requisite A-list contingent, telling the influential American Vogue website Style.com that his love affair with celebrity was over.

“It generated so much press [but] at a certain point it was like, ‘Did anybody actually watch the show?’ “

Snooki proudly sporting Coach

And remember, Marc Jacobs has the likes of Madonna in his front row. But in this new era increasingly dominated by reality TV, the newest crop of ‘celebrities’ aren’t always as aspirational. Access Hollywood asks Is Snooki a Pawn in the Gucci/Coach Bag War?

According to The New York Observer’s Simon Doonan (via Celebuzz),  Snooki is a pawn in a reported raging style war - with the weapon of choice being supple fine leather..Doonan claims that various fashion houses are engaging in “preemptive product placement” or “unbranding,” by sending Snooki new purses from their competitors’ collection…He adds, “The bottom line? Nobody in fashion wants to co-brand with Snooki.”

Back to Stengle quoting Karl Lagerfeld on his decision to use professional yet anonymous models:

… ”Why? Because I love them. They have the right look and class.” Ah, class … and with this in mind, he adds, “Their overexposure in ‘people’ magazines also makes it that one may be a little tired of celebrities and the red carpet.”

Ah yes, the now ubiquitous red carpet. With the wall of brands behind it. When even a nobody like me can all too easily find herself on one, you know it ain’t that special anymore.

Stengle writes an eloquent historical summation of the rise of the celebrity/fashion phenomenon:

It wasn’t until the Eighties – significantly the decade in which designer fashion first identified the potential of its power – that the relationship between fashion and celebrity began to gather momentum, and the seeds were planted for the behemoth it has become today. Giorgio Armani dressed Richard Gere in American Gigolo, and the response was such that the great Italian designer soon ensured that the front rows of his twice-yearly men’s and women’s wear shows were as star-studded as his jewelled evening gowns. Gianni Versace was quick to enter the fray. Speculation was rife as to just how much either designer was prepared to pay anyone, from Sofia Loren to George Michael to attend their shows, resplendent, it almost goes without saying, in Armani or Versace designs.

Versace, in particular, went on to invest huge amounts of capital in advertising campaigns shot by big names such as Irving Penn, Bruce Weber and Richard Avedon that featured everyone from Elton John to Madonna (yes, her again) and from Jon Bon Jovi to Lisa Marie Presley. If ever designer muscle was fully flexed, it was here. The fact that the label had the weight to employ not only the world’s most feted photographers but also so many of its most famous stars was a potent formula that few – before or since – could ever match. By the late Nineties, it was rumoured that Nicole Kidman was being paid no less than $2m simply to wear Christian Dior to significant social occasions.

It was also during this period that fashion magazines began featuring celebrities as opposed to models on their covers on a regular basis – and it was doubtless quite a coup when, for the December 1998 issue of American Vogue, Anna Wintour landed Hillary Clinton for that purpose.

After the rise… the fall:

Within five years, however, the effect of such originally ambitious intentions had been watered down beyond all recognition. Testamant to this was the appearance of the alleged TV “stars” Amanda Holden, Hermione Norris, Tamzin Outhwaite and Ulrika Jonsson on the cover of the November 2002 issue of British Vogue, a decision that moved some high-minded commentators – and Sir Roy Strong, the flamboyant former director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, in particular – to bemoan a celebration of the “trash-ocracy” in British culture. This was hardly “aspirational”, the thinking went, and that, surely, was the point of such glossy titles.

Yes, the ‘trash-ocracy’ is the opposite of aspirational. And not what middle class suburban moms aspire to with their handbag purchases.

Mochila bags featured in NY Times' "Mochila Bags: In the Moment, and Long Gone"

Apparently the latest ‘It Bag’ fought over by ‘It Girls’ isn’t coming from the usual logo ladened corporate conglomerates.

It takes the women of the Wayuu tribe of Colombia and Venezuela up to a month to weave a mochila bag, working eight hours a day, every day. It took no time at all for J. Crew, which featured the strappy satchels in its June catalog, to sell all of them. In fact, they were gone before many customers had even flipped open the issue.

But however wonderful it might seem to be supporting ancient indigenous artisanal craft,  what happens to this new mini industry once the fashionistas abandon these for the next big trend? Karin Nelson writes for the NY Times:

Recently, the mochila has become something of a cult item, toted around town by fashion editors and It girls, and the subject of chatter on style blogs. “It seems to be the iconic tribal bag,” said Anne Slowey, the fashion news director of Elle, who has picked up a few on her travels. “The perfect mix of practical, exotic and chic.”

The PR folks at J. Crew offer the following explanation for the bag’s popularity.

“Craftsmanship is something rare and very valuable,” said Jenna Lyons, J. Crew’s creative director, who was not at all surprised by how quickly the bags went. “There are few things that are still made by hand, much less in a technique that is handed down through generations and is a means of support for a community.” On top of that, she added, “It’s a beautiful bag.”

It’s not entirely untrue, of course, but completely neglects the obvious fact that these amazingly crafted items have been around since long before J. Crew… why now are they all of a sudden so hot? Nelson writes:

Much of the craze can be traced to November when the Vogue editor Lauren Santo Domingo organized the Mochila Project. For it, 40 designers, from Alexander Wang to Oscar de la Renta, were each given a traditional bag and asked to rework it in their own style. The extraordinary results — the Calvin Klein was trimmed in snakeskin; the J. Mendel, in fur — were then auctioned off at a charity event in Miami that left those nowhere near South Florida somewhat envious.

Ah yes, the real truth. Craftsmanship is one thing, but when the fashion cabal creates an elite insider event, carrying around the signifier that marks you as in the know? That’s what the ‘It Girls’ will shell out the big bucks for.

And who knows, given the shift away from corporate symbols and towards the status of individual quality crafts, perhaps some entrepreneur might find a way to enlist the work of of the Wayuu tribe into the next great thing.

The luxury fashion industry took a sharp blow following Financial Crisis ‘08 not because the rich stopped buying (they just slowed down a little bit) but because the people that were acting like they were rich, the ones cleverly squeezing the most they could out of that much, much narrower disposable income margin, panicked in the tumble. When you’re all of a sudden underwater on that McMansion, (you know, the one who’s value could only go up) you might give pause to blowing four figures on a handbag or the latest ‘it shoe’ you can only wear if you valet park.

From members only discount luxury site, gilt.com

Reuters gives an excellent analysis:

The world’s wealthiest consumers kept their taste for expensive goods through a global downturn, but their more middle-class compatriots still striving for the good life may take years to return, if ever.

Sales of luxury goods, such as designer clothes, fine jewelry and high-end handbags, slipped last year as conspicuous consumption fell out of fashion in the recession.

They explain the difference between ‘wealthy’ and ‘aspirational:’

Many in the industry view buyers of luxury goods in two different camps: those who are truly wealthy and those who sometimes shop like they are.

“The wealthy haven’t really changed their shopping patterns other than frequency,” said investment banker William Susman, chief operating officer of boutique firm Financo Inc. “It’s that aspirational shopper that we think has really shifted.”

Milton Pedraza, CEO of the Luxury Institute, said “aspirants” are generally shoppers with an average household income of about $150,000 to $300,000. They helped prop up the industry during the economic boom of the previous decade, many by living beyond their means. They cut back suddenly and dramatically after the financial crisis erupted in late 2008.

He said they will only come back fully once unemployment reaches 5 percent, a level he admitted could take five years.

And I’ll bet that 5 year figure is an optimistic one that does not factor in the possibility that the worst isn’t over and we might very well be on the verge of a double dip.

Still, some executives believe there has been a permanent change in the consumer psyche.

“It will be interesting to see five years from now what people say they don’t do anymore, or what they do differently as shoppers,” said Susan Lyne, CEO of Gilt Groupe, which operates a members-only website selling deeply discounted high-end goods. “I’d bet you it will be fairly profound.”

“You can talk to any hundred people on the street and they will tell you they think differently about buying full-price because they’ve seen so many opportunities to buy at a discount,” she said.

The steep markdowns seen in 2008 and 2009 caused many consumers to question the intrinsic value of certain pricey goods, said Coach Chief Executive Lew Frankfort. Now they look for better quality at a better price, he said.

“Consumers are smart and they have long memories,” Frankfort said. “I’m of the view that things have changed forever.”

The customers that can actually afford to pay full price to cover the overhead of glamorous showrooms on high rent streets staffed with armies of sophisticated sales associates (and security guards) are dwindling in comparison to those desperately striving for the appearance of such status. Not to mention the fact that even a lot of those who are flush prefer a bargain… that’s how many of them ended up wealthy in the first place.

All of this is part of the ongoing fallout as schrapnel from the ‘08 meltdown delivered some critical cracks in the hype chimera of the branded luxury logo industry.

Dries Van Noten at Brownsfashion.com

As for that ‘cautious pause‘ in consumption, looks like somone has hit ‘play.’ Ruth La Ferla writes for the NY Times,

Fashion, they say, is an index of change, registering shifts in confidence and mood too subtle to glean from the rise and the fall of the Dow.

…The profusion of hothouse colors and patterns popping up on New York streets this month suggests a new buoyancy, as women shake off the constraints of a lingering recession and stock up on fashions more lively and vivid than they’ve seen in years.

Whereas the Dow is one number, up or down, black or white, the collective zeitgeist is way too multifaceted and nuanced to be reduced to that. And I’ll argue that while the street level view of what’s hot right this minute does, by necessity, have to be synched up with those by the minute shifts in taste, it’s a whole different scenario when one zooms out to the big picture, long term level.

Such bursts of zeal have given a tentative boost to a sagging apparel industry. Retail sales figures released last week showed the strongest monthly gains in a decade, with department stores reporting an average increase of 11.8 percent. “There is an enormous amount of pent-up demand,” Bernard Baumohl, the chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group said in a recent interview with The New York Times, “and now it is being unleashed.”

Marshal Cohen, the chief analyst for the market research firm NPD Group, even interprets the resurgence of multihued designs as an indicator of recovery. “Among the first things to be successful coming out of a recession are lively colors and patterns,” he said.

Or could it be collective delusional wishful thinking? Or just plain escapism, one of fashion’s key functions? Because a lot of naysayers don’t see our ‘recovery’ as being on solid ground. Robert Kuttner writes for the Huffington Post:

The takeaway from this summit conference of the world’s most prestigious dissenting economists (including three Nobel laureates) is that (1) this financial crisis is not over; (2) if present legislative plans are the best that we can do, the pattern of bubble and bail will repeat itself; (3) only a political counterrevolution that leashes the power of Wall Street will enable the necessary reforms to proceed; and (4) mainstream economics has only begun to atone for its own complicity in legitimizing the financial bubble.

Could all those shoppers be wrong about the future of the economy? Well, it’s not that simple. What those exuberant prints indicate more than anything are the aspirations, beliefs and desires of individuals. No supposedly objective statistical analysis, here.  What’s important is that people want the recession to be over and want to go back to having fun shopping and want something new and refreshing.

At Neiman Marcus, ikat designs from Gucci as well as tiger and python prints are the lure. Their novelty excites women, said Ken Downing, the fashion director at Neiman. “These are things they don’t yet own.”

Once again, irresistible drives sales.  And what about this drive to return to quality, and shift towards sensible investment dressing? How ’bout a little instant gratification instead?

Crowds have also been swarming fast-fashion chains like H & M and Topshop, each awash in pattern. At Ann Taylor Loft on 42nd Street and Broadway, Lauri Cohen, a health care worker, showed off her latest find, a fragile cotton blouse covered in pink and green buds. “I’m buying all the prints and stripes I can,” Ms. Cohen said. “I’ve been in black long enough.”

Bold, colorful prints are eye-catching and exciting. You’ll get noticed, get complimented. But then what? It either becomes a signature piece of your style… or it looks tired and trendy right away.

There is a passion nonetheless, Ms. Corlett noted, “to have more, to move beyond the deprivation stage we’ve been in.”

Ah yes, the call to reduce consumption is perceived as deprivation. For those - like myself- who are wired with a visceral craving for lovely clothes, it’s going to take external forces to curb shopping. I can cloak my thrifting habit in a veil of greenwashed motives, but isn’t the real reason the fact that I can get so much more cooler shit for so much less money? My closets overfloweth, be it from the Blue Hangar or Barney’s. And when my car blows up and I have to forego even Blue Hangar runs? Yes, I have to keep my urge to pout in check.

Denise Dorrance comic

In America we tend to hold on tightly to this myth of a ‘classless society.’ Talk of status and reaching for it is taboo; rarely will an individual list ’signaling status to others’ as motivation for purchasing a luxury good (yeah sure, it’s allll about the quality…). British epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson isn’t afraid to broach the class issue, and explains the fashion/status connection pretty clearly in his interview with Brooke Jarvis:

Louis Vuitton, classic status symbol

Status competition causes problems all the way up; we’re all very sensitive to how we’re judged. Think about Robert Frank’s books Luxury Fever or Falling Behind, or the great French sociologist Bourdieu—they show how much of consumption is about status competition. People spend thousands of pounds on a handbag with the right labels to make statements about themselves. In more unequal countries, people are more likely to get into debt. They save less of their income and spend more. They work much longer hours—the most unequal countries work perhaps nine weeks longer in a year.

If you grow up in an unequal society, your actual experience of human relationships is different. Your idea of human nature changes. If you grow up in a consumerist society, you think of human beings as self-interested. In fact, consumerism is so powerful because we’re so highly social. It’s not that we actually have an overwhelming desire to accumulate property, it’s that we’re concerned with how we’re seen all the time. So actually, we’re misunderstanding consumerism. It’s not material self-interest, it’s that we’re so sensitive. We experience ourselves through each other’s eyes—and that’s the reason for the labels and the clothes and the cars.

“We experience ourselves through each other’s eyes.” We are conscious about how others perceive us, especially strangers who have no other point of reference other than our outward appearance.

This is about the psychosocial effects of inequality—the impact of living with anxiety about our feelings of superiority or inferiority. It’s not the inferior housing that gives you heart disease, it’s the stress, the hopelessness, the anxiety, the depression you feel around that. The psychosocial effects of inequality affect the quality of human relationships. Because we are social beings, it’s the social environment and social relationships that are the most important stressors.

Coco Rocha in Jean Paul Gautlier's Spring 2010 show. Does she look 'fat' to you?

Oversupply for limited demand means the fashion industry need only pay lip service to the idea of more healthy models. In reality, a size 4 is too ‘fat’ for even a celebrity model like Coco Rocha. Guy Trebay reports for the NY Times:

Back in the days when fashion was a more restricted industry and the pool of talent limited, models were groomed and expected to have longer careers, making a transition as they aged and filled out from catwalks to catalogs.

Now, Mr. Scully said, the sheer number of aspirants is so great that a span of five years (or 10 seasons) is almost enough to qualify a model for a gold watch.

So uproar notwithstanding, there are still hundreds, even thousands of teenagers eager to starve their not yet filled out bodies to have a chance to live the glamorous dream. How useful are a girl’s objections to these demands going to be when she can be replaced in the blink of an eye?

But Coco Rocha has carved enough of a place for herself to speak out and be heard:

“I’m not in demand for the shows anymore,” said the model, who has worked for Marc Jacobs, Prada, Chanel, Dior, Jean Paul Gaultier and Louis Vuitton, among many others.

“I’ve been told to lose weight when I was really skinny,” said Ms. Rocha, who recently added a new line item to her résumé: correspondent for Modelinia.com, the Web site for the model-obsessed.

“You know what, I’ve stopped caring,” Ms. Rocha said. “If I want a hamburger, I’m going to have one. No 21-year-old should be worrying about whether she fits a sample size.”

And no lanky 14-year-old should be pressured to starve herself, to cadge prescription drugs like Adderall or to take up smoking as an appetite suppressant.

“Girls are told they’re not skinny enough, or they hear, ‘She’s old, she’s boring, we’ve had her, she’s not tiny anymore,’ ” Ms. Rocha said. “A lot of people don’t take into account the vulnerability of these young girls.” And the latest crop of models is not made up of “adults or even sort-of adults,” she insisted. “They are children. Point closed.”

But let’s see if anything changes.

Kate Moss at Chanel

In the mass publicity frenzy that Fashion Weeks have become, reports on front row celebrity appearances had become just a typical part of the hype machine. And perhaps that’s the problem. Cathy Horyn dares to pierce the veil and share the real behind the scenes dynamics in the New York Times’ Muscling In on the Front Row:

“It’s such an underworld in a way, the celebrity wrangling,” said Vanessa Bismarck, a New York-based fashion publicist whose firm, BPCM, represents labels like Preen and Azzaro. She was referring to the deals, trades and exclusive contracts — first-class airfare, hotel rooms for friends, per diems, designer boutique shopping sprees — that miraculously clear a path to the front row for a busy actress. This is especially the case in Paris and Milan, where budgets and appetites for celebrities are that much bigger.

“Their managers and agents realize fashion shows are a money-making opportunity,” said Roger Padilha, whose firm MAO Public Relations represents a number of fashion brands. “If you see an A-list star at a show, that’s because she’s making $100,000 on the deal.”

No small wonder runway show costs have entered the stratosphere. Can anyone say ‘overhead?’

Yet this season, because of the economy and a general souring on celebrity, many designers are taking a budget approach to V.I.P.’s, paying only for a guest’s outfit for the show and maybe grooming and car-service expenses. A publicist for several New York designers said his clients had been approached by actresses in Los Angeles willing to grace their front rows — provided travel expenses were covered. The designers said no thanks. “Nobody has the money,” the publicist said.

But these big name designers backed by big name corporate conglomerates could get their hands on said money… if the return on investment were there. Apparently that seems to be waning.

Maybe the blunt mercantile aspects of celebrity — your frock for my recognizable face — have turned off the taste-makers. On Wednesday, Mr. Jacobs’s business partner, Robert Duffy, told Style.com that no celebrities were being invited to the designer’s show on Monday, a reversal of years of packing rappers in with famous artists and actors. Mr. Duffy said that “the celebrity thing” had become a bore.

…Now, like a worn rut in a road, the whole business of celebrity seems so well established as to be old and familiar, and in fashion, hopelessly preoccupied with the new, that makes it worthy of contempt.

Stars, too, find a front-row appearance less of a thrill. They see little reason to put up with the swarming photographers and inane questions from pouncing gossip reporters. Some celebrities strive for loftier images. “Angelina Jolie doesn’t go to the shows,” Ms. Schmeidler observed. “She goes to Haiti.”

Bling is out, social responsibility is way more fashionable?

Which brings us back to Snooki and the “Jersey Shore” bunch.

Inevitably they will be invited to a fashion show, just as surely as Lindsay Lohan, who only a few years ago was a desired “get” for the front row, will be told by someone’s publicist that there is no place for her now. She’s old business.

“one minute you’re in, and the next minute… you’re out.”

Which brings us back to Snooki and the “Jersey Shore” bunch.

“Oh, you know you’re going to see them at something,” Mr. Kors said of the “Jersey” cast. The fashion world scorns anything — camp taste, bad hair — until suddenly it’s in its interest to approve them, and then the idea is genius.

When aspirational young women noticeably outnumber boyfriend-worthy men on college campuses apparently “The Rules:Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right ” get tossed out the window. But if its true that men are wired for ‘the chase,’ what do they think of this new wave of female assertiveness in the dating game? From Alex Williams’ The New Math on Campus in the NY Times:

North Carolina, with a student body that is nearly 60 percent female, is just one of many large universities that at times feel eerily like women’s colleges. Women have represented about 57 percent of enrollments at American colleges since at least 2000, according to a recent report by the American Council on Education. Researchers there cite several reasons: women tend to have higher grades; men tend to drop out in disproportionate numbers; and female enrollment skews higher among older students, low-income students, and black and Hispanic students.

57-43 isn’t that impossible of a ratio, is it? Keep in mind that these statistics don’t account for who’s hot and who’s not, and how the standards of women and men might differ:

Jayne Dallas, a senior studying advertising who was seated across the table, grumbled that the population of male undergraduates was even smaller when you looked at it as a dating pool. “Out of that 40 percent, there are maybe 20 percent that we would consider, and out of those 20, 10 have girlfriends, so all the girls are fighting over that other 10 percent,” she said.

And that targeted 10 percent are in the catbird seat:

Thanks to simple laws of supply and demand, it is often the women who must assert themselves romantically or be left alone on Valentine’s Day, staring down a George Clooney movie over a half-empty pizza box.

“I was talking to a friend at a bar, and this girl just came up out of nowhere, grabbed him by the wrist, spun him around and took him out to the dance floor and started grinding,” said Kelly Lynch, a junior at North Carolina, recalling a recent experience.

Students interviewed here said they believed their mating rituals reflected those of college students anywhere. But many of them — men and women alike — said that the lopsided population tends to skew behavior.

“A lot of my friends will meet someone and go home for the night and just hope for the best the next morning,” Ms. Lynch said. “They’ll text them and say: ‘I had a great time. Want to hang out next week?’ And they don’t respond.”

Even worse, “Girls feel pressured to do more than they’re comfortable with, to lock it down,” Ms. Lynch said.

Fake bisexual competitive show off anyone? That quote makes me recall the much talked about Details magazine article How Internet Porn is Changing Teen Sex and the fact that the counterpart of guys expecting their dates to act like porn stars (I’ll let you read the article for specifics)… are young women who are willing to play along.

As for a man’s cheating, “that’s a thing that girls let slide, because you have to,” said Emily Kennard, a junior at North Carolina. “If you don’t let it slide, you don’t have a boyfriend.”

I remember a couple of years ago when Big Love first aired and I became briefly obsessed with Mormons and polygamy I found myself on a pro-polygamy site written by a guy who stated that there are a lot of women out there that would rather share a piece of a good man than have a loser all to themselves. For that lucky top 10 percent of popular, attractive, high status boys in their early twenties that most of the single girls are becoming accustomed to competing for and sharing by necessity, isn’t polyamory an obvious progression? An alpha male with a handful of girls in rotation keeping themselves in the game while shopping for (or amusing themselves with or relying on emotional support from) beta males on the side?

…Women on gender-imbalanced campuses are paying a social price for success and, to a degree, are being victimized by men precisely because they have outperformed them, Professor Campbell said. In this way, some colleges mirror retirement communities, where women often find that the reward for outliving their husbands is competing with other widows for the attentions of the few surviving bachelors.

“If a guy is not getting what he wants, he can quickly and abruptly go to the next one, because there are so many of us,” said Katie Deray, a senior at the University of Georgia, who said that it is common to see six provocatively clad women hovering around one or two guys at a party or a bar.

If ever there were a quintessential example of advertising preying on insecurities of those too young to know better in order to drive consumption of a bunch of junk the entire planet would be better off not having at all, here you have it. From the NY Times Masculinity in a Spray Can:

One bathroom in Stefanie Mullen’s home in a suburb of San Diego is stocked with enough products to line an aisle in a drugstore:

Body wash. Face wash. Exfoliator. Exfoliating wash. Body hydrator. Body spray. Deodorant. Shaving cream. Shampoos and conditioner. Hair gel, of course.

All told, 18 different containers.

They belong to her sons Noah Assaraf, 13, and Keenan Assaraf, 14. They have been dousing themselves for years.

“Every day they walk out the door in a cloud of spray-on macho,” Mrs. Mullen said.

When boys pile into her car, that’s her cue to roll down her window, no matter the weather. “The smell drives me nuts.”

Nooooo! That stuff smells nasty. It does not drive women wild. I’m all about good grooming habits for boys, but soap and deoderant and maybe some zit cream should suffice. Where did these guys collectively come up with the notion that drowing themselves in this eye watering equivalent of glade air freshener is what women want?

“More insecurity equals more product need, equals more opportunity for marketers,” said Kit Yarrow, a professor of psychology and marketing at Golden Gate University.

For “Gen Buy,” a new book she co-authored about marketing to tweens and teenagers, Ms. Yarrow held focus groups with boys. “The 10-year-olds are copying the 14-year-olds, trying to be cool,” she said. “Everything is moving down the spectrum. It’s getting younger and more pronounced.”

So boys are turning to hypermasculine guideposts like Instinct from Axe, Swagger by Old Spice and Magnetic Attraction Enhancing Body Wash by Dial with results that are poignant, comic, confused — and stinky.

“It’s not necessarily a hygiene thing,” said Paul Begley, a physical education teacher at Messalonskee Middle School in Oakland, Me. “If they’ve been sweating, they’ll use it as a mask instead of a shower.”

Nooooo!!! Just take a shower, please? But apparently my views aren’t shared by my eigth grade female counterparts:

What further drives the boys’ rush to the products are girls themselves. Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst for the market research firm NPD Group, said that in a recent survey, 41 percent of boys ages 8 to 18 said that one of their best friends was a girl.

“They shop with girls, and girls influence them,” Mr. Cohen said, much as the girls in the hit Nickelodeon tween show “iCarly” hold sway over Freddie, their hapless male buddy.

“Boys are paying attention to personal brands more than ever because it’s too easy to be criticized virally by a girl,” said Pat Fiore, a market consultant for body image products in Morristown, N.J. “The peer pressure is starting from the girls, who are discussing how much someone smells or what they look like, and it’s being recorded in real time by e-mail and texting.”

These girls are also becoming sexualized at earlier ages, applying lip gloss and wearing racier clothes. Boys, a bewildered developmental step or three behind, feel additional pressure to catch up.

Ms. Wiseman, who also wrote “Queen Bees & Wannabes,” a nonfiction book about the social pecking order of tween girls, speaks with students around the country. Even in rural North Dakota, she said, 12-year-old boys were highlighting their hair, a focus on appearance that was almost nonexistent five years ago.

“We consistently look at boys in a position of privilege and power,” she said. “But if you ask a 12-year-old boy if they’re in a position of power, they feel out of control of themselves, their bodies.” She added: “I defy anyone to tell me that an eighth-grade girl doesn’t look like she has more power and control than a boy.”