Trendwatch: Classes to the Masses"

"'This is like a rock concert,' said Hugo Chung, 28, a graduate student at New York University, just before diving toward the main floor racks, which were clotted with bargains for men and women," writes Ruth La Ferla in today's New York Times, summing up the Karl Lagerfeld cheap chic debut at Hennes & Mauritz.



The zeitgeist entails what economists call a "felt need" for low cost high end fashion so that the consumer can "achieve their aesthetic ideals," especially now, in this age, with the advent of celebrity shopping magazines and channels like Metro TV's Full Frontal Fashion and E! and it's younger more ambitious cousin, the Style Network, which offers a sort of "insider double secret fashion knowledge" -- a sort of taste of the Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil -- to those who might otherwise have remained blissfully ignorant of such matters.

There is a certain pleasure, one could easily imagine, to saying, wryly, at a cocktail party, to no one in particular, of one's dress, "It's a Karl Lagerfeld, you know." Bloomberg reports of the phenomenon:

"For Karl Lagerfeld to do stuff, it's amazing," said Jade Stokes, 22, from New Jersey. "It's beautiful and the price you're getting it at is inconceivable."

Prohibitive pricing, to be sure, has, in the past, made the possibility of rocking a Lagerfeld virtually impossible to the standard non-socialite. But the growing insider knowledge and, to a degree, envy of celebrity culture (and the attendant schadenfreude so recognizable in mature democracies) have become so extreme and all-pervasive of late that it has seeped into our politics as well as into our way of thinking about the way we dress.

Ten years ago, only an inner cabal of the most pop culturally obsessed (or fashion students coming to New York or LA from Kansas) knew who or what a Karl Lagerfeld was, except, perhaps as some sort of vague exotic flora, namely, a luxury name brand, like Dior or Herrera, a thing-in-itself beautiful, but, quite frankly, way out of reach. Otherwise Lagerfeld was a distant star in a remote star system. Now even People and US Weekly covers New York Fashion Week, although, The Corsair must add, with no false modesty whatsoever, that that coverage came after The Corsair's. That having been said, ever since Isaac Mizrahi brought "classes to the masses" in his High/Low fashion line for Target, the entire playing field has been restructured.

Bloomberg News writes:

"Hennes & Mauritz marketing director Jorgen Andersson said Friday. It went on sale at 500 stores in 20 countries, with party dresses for $99.90 and wool coats for $129. Chanel jackets by German-born Lagerfeld, who has worked for the fashion house for two decades, normally start at about $2,250, while suits are priced from about $4,000.'It looks like rugby without rules,' said Ed Ritter, from York, Pa., who stood on the sidelines at the Piazza San Babila store in Milan as women elbowed each other and grabbed chiffon dresses off the racks before salespeople could get them on the selling floor. Ritter, who was accompanying his wife, was in the city for business for Starbucks.This is the first time Hennes, which specializes in low-cost fashion, has enlisted a well-known luxury designer. The collection is part of the Sweden-based company's plan to rejuvenate profit, which rose at the slowest pace in three years last year. European retail sales fell for a third month in October, hurt by job cuts and record oil prices.

"'The only problem is the collection wasn't big enough,'said Caroline Saxing, 25, who spent $1,000 at an H&M shop in Stockholm and still didn't get a jacket she had hoped to buy.Andersson said some shoppers stayed overnight in sleeping bags outside the store on New York's Fifth Avenue. The Stokes family was at the H&M on Lexington Avenue at 8 a.m., two hours before it opened, and came back an hour later to find a line forming."

The Karl Lagerfeld collection for H & M also sold out throughout Europe. And Farah Weinstein of the New York Post described New York's reaction to the Lagerfeld debut/ phenomenon at H & M, thusly:

"Four years after Swedish chain H&M first took the city by storm, the frenzy was reignited yesterday by the arrival of the one-season-only Karl Lagerfeld for H&M collection.

"Despite the chilly rain, lines of hundreds wrapped around the Fifth Avenue store; some shoppers had arrived as early as 5:30 a.m.to get their hands on the cheap-chic styles from the man behind Chanel. Within the first hour, 1,000 people had walked in the door.

"Within the first half-hour, 1,500 items had been sold. Within minutes, even $6 plastic sunglasses were being hawked on eBay for $100."

The article continues, later, �'There was a mad rush,' said Jennifer Uglialoro, an H&M spokesperson. 'Everyone was going crazy � even staking out the stock rooms. I�ve never seen anything like it before.'"

Tom Van Riperand and Phyllis Furman of the NY Daily News write, "By the end of the day, the Karl Lagerfeld for H&M line sold out at the chain's seven Manhattan stores and across the Atlantic in cities from London to Milan, Munich to Stockholm.

"'We couldn't re-stock the shelves fast enough,' said H&M floor supervisor Cindy Azzarello at the H&M store at Herald Square.

And, the most excellent Fashionweekdaily says of it all:

"While the usual crowd that appear at these fashion events showed�Elle�s Susan Cernek, In Style�s Erin Sumwalt, Toby Tucker and Alice Kim, Vogue�s Meredith Melling Burke and Stephanie Tran, to name a few�there were a couple that drew some stares and open-mouthed gasps. First was Cathy Horyn, who, sporting a blown-out look, stopped by to check out the wares in person, including a black top priced at $49.90. But alas, she left without purchase in hand. Not so with Patricia Field, who arrived at the end and proceeded to snatch up 20 wool blazers with corduroy collars and an endless number of t-shirts that sported Lagerfeld�s face.



Above: (Image Via Fashionweekdaily) Vogue's Meredith Melling Burke shops H & M.

The Daily News writes of the frenzy's numbers, "In the United States alone, the 19 stores carrying Lagerfeld sold some 200,000 items, raking in an estimated $12 million in sales in one record-breaking day, insiders said."

Wow.