Affordable high fashion

Many elite fashion designers aim to please the masses by bringing their designs to less luxurious labels.

This season, Balmain Paris collaborated with H&M for a collection of brilliant, sophisticated and high-fashion pieces.

The collection features the dresses and blazers, cuffs and clutches seen on Balmain’s favorite models: Kendall Jenner, Jourdan Dunn and Gigi Hadid. The trio is featured in the brand’s campaign, and each has generated social media posts to promote exciting news about the collection.

There has been a lot of hype surrounding the release of the Balmain x H&M collaboration.

Its first announcement came at the Billboard Music Awards last May. Since, there has been an Instagram leak, supermodel-filled campaign ads, a Backstreet Boys concert and a video of Kendall Jenner dancing on a subway.

Olivier Rousteing, creative director at Balmain and lover of the Kardashians/Jenners, dressed the stars head to toe in Balmain x H&M for events leading up to the collection’s launch.

Image: black bridesmaids dresses

And now we can finally shop their looks. Starting at 8 a.m. Thursday, the collection went live online and in select stores around the United States.

To shop a look similar to Kylie’s at Billboard, look for the beaded velvet dress, sandal boots and leather waist belt, all in black and gold on hm.com.

To shop Kendall’s look, search for the beaded velvet jacket and suede thigh-high boots, also worn by Dunn the same evening. Dunn paired the boots with the top with braided details tucked into the suede waist belt and draped silk skirt in red.

These looks have some fabulous accents with bold details, if you ask me.

However, there are two things to be aware of before filling up your shopping cart: online purchases are limited to one per style per customer, and in-store purchases are limited to two per style per customer.

So if you are looking to purchase a complete look, your best bet is to head into a store — none in Indiana carry the collection, unfortunately — or complete a separate order from your phone.

Overall, the collection features an imitation of some of Balmain’s looks and styles, recreated with lower-quality fabrics and findings to make the products more affordable. The collection does not reflect the typical price point of H&M’s usual pieces. However, it is making high-fashion more practical and inclusive.

It’s cool that big names in the fashion industry come down to Earth with these collaborations. They are certainly not desperate for the extra profit, so it seems this is really more about making a statement to their target audience.

Some other big name collaborations this year include Adidas x Kanye West, Vera Wang for Kohl’s and Keds x Kate Spade New York.

The pattern here is big names tweaking their designs to better fit a more modest spender. Why shouldn’t a middle class man or woman feel like an A-list celebrity after they purchase an item at a lower-priced store?

The idea of status symbols in high fashion is finally creeping out the door. Pairing a luxury bag with no-name jeans is the “casual chic” look of our generation, so who cares what the label reads if we can rock the look?

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