Cheap Trendy Clothes: A High Fashion How-To

Putting together cheap trendy clothes without spending a ton of money is hard. Before I got involved with fashion and traveled to New York, Paris, London, and Milan during a long internship, I was pretty clueless. But now I’ve learned the best ways to get amazing looking and up to date stylish clothing for dirt cheap! When you see people in these fashion cities walking all over the place, you’ve gotta wonder how they can afford it. Here are 4 ways I’ve learned!

You need to know some basic big fashion city styles. Your own personal style might be ok, but the trends in these fashion meccas are pretty timeless - You don’t want to look like you just stepped out of a High School in Kansas. Most of the clothes aren’t super flashy or covered in massive labels, like they are on fake designer and cheap mall clothing. Go for solid colors or simple patterns in a well-fitting silhouette, and you’re already a step ahead of everyone. Where does one find such things for cheap?

A way to get high-fashion designer looks for cheaper than even sale price is sample sales. It’s kinda tough finding these unless you already live in a big city, but if you know where to look you can find them online! There are several organizations online that absorb designer’s samples before they even get to these frenzied sales, and offer them to you via an online inventory. Simply google “online sample sales”, you’ll find several good results (such as gilt group, based out of NYC)

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Although sample sales offer deep discounts, even this may be too pricey for many. Another great way to get amazing and cheap trendy clothes (without spending hundreds per piece) is simply picking the right retailers. These retailers offer high fashion designs made by very talented design teams (based in the major fashion cities) manufactured in places other than Italy, letting you buy the same patterns and silhouettes for literally 1/10th of the price. These stores are H&M, Zara, and Uniqlo (occasionally Urban Outfitters). If you don’t have any in your city, check them out online. Additionally, American Apparel offers a lot of timeless, well-proportioned, solid pieces that are by definition cheap trendy clothes.

Some hazards:

Avoid the mall! Most mall brand clothing is tacky and the fits are several sizes too big (unless you’re really chunky) and just downright unflattering. Not only that, the clothing is manufactured in the worst places possible and prone to falling apart the fastest. Also, avoid ebay. Most high fashion clothing and accessories are fake - Even if the labels are attached, with hologram and all, they’re bound to be fake. If the place making the stuff can fake the clothing, making a few decent tags is cake.

If all else fails, go to the thrift store. Check out fashion blogs and runway reports and try to match up the style with garments found here. This method takes some time and patience, but you’d be surprised at how many people in New York frequent these to complete looks.