More flash for our cash

Remember 2006? When you dropped $300 at the club for a $30 bottle of vodka? When you weren't really hip-hop if you weren't cruising on a yacht, making it rain? When designers were casually declaring that America was over, that it was all about Dubai (or Moscow or Shanghai)? When that was something worth aspiring to?

Now cut to 2009. While scaling back on restaurants and vacations can feel like a sacrifice, you might've noticed that clothes shopping on a budget feels more like an opportunity. Walk by the display windows of Club Monaco and you'll spot mannequins fully styled in cuffed jeans and cover-ready bow ties. Or if you happened to be in SoHo on one particular morning this past October, you would have noticed a line of shoppers snaking down Broadway. They weren't queuing up for concert tickets or Robert Pattinson but for a chance to get into the gently priced Japanese clothing emporium Uniqlo, where +J, a collection designed by Jil Sander, was about to hit shelves.

Low-priced retailers are now selling everything the pulled-together guy needs, and they're doing it in a way that doesn't feel cheap. As Patrick Robinson, Gap's ecutive vice president of design since 2007, says, "I went through each category—from tees to leather jackets to khakis—and created a product that looks, feels, and acts like something that costs ten times more. I'm hearing from people who used to wear $200 or $300 jeans that our $59 pair fits better." Whether it's a chunky knit from FCUK or a skinny tie from the superhyped British import Topman, the clothes you can afford right now are the clothes you actually want to wear.

Says Tim Farah, formerly of Brooks Brothers' Black Fleece (where he worked alongside Thom Browne) and current vice president of men's design at Club Monaco, "Men aspire to runway clothes but can't necessarily afford them. We're trying to bridge that gap by not only using Italian cashmere but making sure it doesn't pill, or by creating a suit with construction and proportion you can't find at this price."

And consider that Swedish fast-fashion behemoth HM is on track to post double-digit sales growth for 2009—this in a year when flat is the new up. It's probably naive to say that the way we shop is undergoing a fundamental or permanent change; like all things, consumer habits run in cycles. But the new crop of budget-minded retailers offers refreshing proof that when the going gets tough, the tough get stylish.—jason chen