The Skinny on Paying Less

OooKay...so I tried to be clever with the title by combining two different subjects at once. It doesn't really do any good. Moving on...

Since the mall was on my way home following an errand, I decided to stop by. I figured that I might be able to score some good, cheap summer tops for work now that Fall weather is here. I didn't buy anything at the mall (which was good, since I did buy something at Target earlier), but I did observe a couple of things:

1) For those of you who like skinny jeans, Express has a pretty good sale for them. I went to an Express with a friend a couple of days ago (at a different location from today), where the sale price was not very apparent. The Express store I went today had a ton of $20 skinny jeans on sale, and the management made it a selling point. I decided to try them on for the heck of it, knowing that the style doesn't work for me. Even if they did look good on me, I was between sizes, so I wouldn't have bought them. At least I got to "review" them for everyone else. The jeans are surprisingly comfortable, with a bit of stretch. Way too long, as usual, but that could easily be dealt with. I give the Express sale skinny jeans a thumbs up.

2) Payless has teamed up with Abaeté, a designer label headed by Laura Poretzky. Most people probably don't know about Abaeté, but when I heard that the designer was teaming up with Payless to create a line of affordable shoes, I got really excited. My first exposure to Abaeté was through Le Train Bleu, one of my favorite sites for e-window-shopping (I'll have to credit my sister with that term). The clothes are simply gorgeous, and beyond my reach price-wise. I'm not here to discuss the merits and downsides of designers who are getting into the Target-style for-the-masses lines as a means to market their upscale lines, though I find it to be a fascinating debate (several bloggers, including The Budget Fashionista, dissected it a lot better than I ever can). What I will say is that good designs at affordable prices is a good thing.

My initial impression was that the Abaeté line was only available at select locations, which often means higher-income areas and certainly not the Payless in my 'hood. The mall I went to is in a middle-class area, so I thought that I'd have the best chance of finding the Abaeté shoes there. There they were, prominently displayed near the entrance. The prices were just a notch above the average Payless price, but they were very affordable. The collection was small (4 types of shoes, multiple colors of each), but they were well-designed. My favorite is the red Casey flat, and the purple/black Oliver d'Orsay pump was classy and cute. The tall boots were cute, but I didn't like the ankle boot.