In the last Thursday edition of WWD, two feature articles were devoted to recent deals made between high-end fashion names and mass-market retail shops. One was about Target’s collaboration with (yet another) funky designer brand, Luella. Not really news because Target pulls this kind of stuff all the time (like, who doesn’t own at least one of their Cynthia Rowley-designed dish towels?). Adidas, H&M, Easy Spirit, and Le Sport Sac have all done the “design within reach” approach. Now, Payless Shoes has joined in on the trend. According the article, a small collection of shoes by Laura Poretzky, designer and founder of the two-year-old, luxury sports brand, Abaete (say it, ah-BYE-ah-tay) will hit select stores in September. The article also notes that the collection was inspired by “Asian silk screening, kimonos, and martial arts uniforms.” Sounds like a far cry from the synthetic leather Payless pumps so popular at suburban high school proms - well, my prom at least.

“This gives me a great opportunity to broaden what I’m doing. When we got underway, Payless didn’t give me many restrictions,” said Laura Poretzky in the WWD article.

Though it’s easy to love Payless' attempt to bring to truly cute, original, and most importantly, affordable shoes to the market, it’s hard to forget the fiasco that occured when Stella McCartney’s H&M collection hit stores last fall. Though the McCartney collection was priced at mass-market value, its distribution was limited. The much-hyped event was over in hours as the clothing completely sold out with no chance of a restock. Those who were not lined up outside the store at opening time (because they had, you know, day jobs) were out of luck. But wasn't the whole point for these clothes suppose to be accessible? One blogger on The Consumerist wrote:

We can’t decide how we feel about this at all. We like low-end fashion clothiers. And we’d rather pay $70 to get a limited-edition bit of clothing than, you know, more. But f#*k a bunch of frenzy. Shopping at discount retailers is already unpleasant enough, what with the lines, the piles of unsorted clothing, and the wretched humanity that shops there, but the last thing we want to do is get up at the crack of dawn to get that Old Navy Isaac Mizrahi polar fleece we just had to have. It ruins the whole ‘design for the plebes’ thing we like about these stores in the first place. (Well, okay, not Old Navy.)

Julia Turner from Slate also showed her exasperation with the whole debacle.

So, in truth, the defining characteristic of McCartney's clothes for H&M is not that they're cheap, or even that they're well-designed. It's that you can't have them. Those skinny jeans that retailed for $69.90? They're about as hard to acquire as an Hermès Birkin bag.

Further down in the article, she described this trend in fashion marketing:

Marketers have a term for the shopping experience H&M created: massclusivity. The idea is to offer a limited run of a premium item. The upside: Shoppers who are savvy enough to snag what you're selling feel like part of a members-only club.

So if you're saving up your pocket change and counting down the days until you can get your hands on of Poretzkys silk, martial arts-inspired, "Casey Flats," take the fashion history lesson seriously, plan stragticaly, and prepare yourself to fight for your shoes.