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High Fashion vs High Street

“Nowadays no collab would surprise me.”

Hey Taylor Swift, there’s a new #squad in town. And unlike yours, it’s 100 per cent achievable to be part of this one.

In fact, anyone can join. All you need is a cheeky $100 note and a penchant for waiting in long lines from 3am. It’s called the designer collab, and you can find it at pretty much every high street store you can imagine. Hell, even Target is on board the (fat free) gravy train these days.

The guestlist reads like a dream fashion week line-up. The only difference is, you don’t need to dream about it anymore. From Missoni to Alexander Wang and even local designers like Dion Lee, the high end and the high street are joining forces more than ever before.

But when you can buy Balmain at H&M and Carine Roitfeld at Uniqlo, I ask: is there any point in buying designer anymore?

Back in 2004, H&M had a brilliant idea: what if fashion lovers everywhere could get their hands on a bit of Chanel… but for a fraction of the price? They enlisted Karl Largerfeld for a diffusion line and the rest is history. Stella McCartney and Isabel Marant came next, and Maison Martin Margiela and Versace soon followed.

However, the more my favourite designers surfed the high street money wave, the less I lusted after their wares.

I bought into the Alexander Wang x H&M collab recently, only to find that I’ve worn my weeks-pay *real* Wang piece 100 times over, compared to my H&M humdrum. So did the collab actually work for the brand?

Did it make Wang more accessible? Yes, sure. Future H&M collabs more desirable? Probably not. Does Alexander Wang actually care either way? I doubt it.

Quite the opposite in fact – it seems all our favourite designers couldn’t be more chuffed about the big brands lining their pockets. Just take Balmain designer Olivier Rousteing.

“I want to talk to my generation − this is my main aim as a designer,” he tells us. “H&M allows me the unique possibility of bringing everyone into the world of Balmain, getting a piece of the dream.”

But is a cutting room floor reject from Balmain’s fashion HQ, with an H&M tag slapped on it, really ‘the dream’?

There’s something altogether not-dreamy-at-all about the reality of waiting in line for 5,432 hours with a slew of eBay warriors looking to make a quick buck off resales, while I attempt to convince myself that the just-not-quite-right fit is worth it. Because, Balmain.

Perhaps I’m just a fool for fash, but personally, my #dream is to one day own the real, honest-to-goodness thing. To spend an entire month’s salary on something other than rent and food. To stare at the double breasted beauty in my cupboard, pride of place, and wonder if some event I’m going to is really worth the wear…

Sigh. Nowadays no collab would surprise me.

Maybe the next one will be Louboutin and PayLess Shoes. After all, their slogan seems entirely appropriate… So why exactly SHOULD we pay more when we can pay less?

It’s a question of quality. Of heritage and legacy… Or is it? I guess that’s for you to decide.

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