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High Fashion Sews Up Another Market: Designers Targeting the Working Woman With Business Chic
| Article
# : |
12640 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1987 |
1,605 Words |
| Author
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Gail Greco
Gail Greco is the author of the just-released Bridal Shower
Handbook (Wallace-Homestead, 1988). |
High fashion, once the domain of the rich, is now affordable for the working woman, because of a recent turnaround in the fashion industry.
Prompted by an exploding market of professional working women searching for alternatives to mannish business suits, in 1982 Anne Klein and other designers developed second-tier lines or diffusions of their couture collections. Some designers opened their doors wide enough for every consumer to purchase their label.
Jill Packard, a 38-year-old investment broker from upstate New York, took advantage of the change. Although she has a keen eye for designer styles, they had been unaffordable. Now, she and others like her choose from a varied selection of moderately priced designer fashions.
For $500 Packard can buy a Portfolio - Perry Ellis' secondary line - three-piece silk and gabardine suit. A similar look from the Perry Ellis couture collection had previously been cost-prohibitive at about $1,200, causing her to purchase lackluster clothing that she tired of quickly.
Some could argue that this is history repeating itself. When English couturier Charles Frederick Worth established the first house of fashion in the early 1850s, his middle-class clientele could not afford the magnificent fabrics that Worth best understood. Therefore, he issued a lower-priced line, nevertheless still inspired by his keen sense of feminine design. Worth could not deal in haute couture until his designs reached the royal European fashion trendsetters a few years
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