Buy Style, But Skip High Prices

Hmmm. Now which would you choose: a denim dress and leather belt by DKNY for $235 or the Banana Republic version for $110?

Depending, of course, on whether you could cough up the $110, the answer’s easy.

Nearly everyone wants to trim their wardrobe budget these days. Today we introduce a new column called Dress For Less, which can help you do just that.

Dress For Less will appear on the new Choices page, a guide to using personal resources such as your time, money and health, in each Thursday’s IN Life section. This column will match designer clothes with bargain-priced knock-offs.

It already fascinates readers across the country, who keep columnist Candy Barrie inundated with letters.

It’s easy to figure out why. Says Barrie, “Usually my Dress For Less item will be at least a third of the cost of the designer item.”

Barrie will introduce you to bargains in unexpected places: the boys’ department, the catalogs, the consignment shops.

“I even shop Kmart,” she says. “I have found some wonderful things at Kmart that I would put in my own wardrobe.”

Watch for Barrie’s models to appear in all ages, sizes and colors. You’ll find children, men, pregnant women, people in wheelchairs, people who wear plus sizes.

“I don’t use blond, blue-eyed Claudia Schiffer models all the time,” she says. “I focus in on real people.”

They’ll be wearing the same styles the fashion magazines feature this spring: Audrey Hepburn looks, pencil slim skirts, silky pajamas, and lots of reds and pinks.

Only for less.