Opinion: Cheap Chic, Cheap Seats

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There’s a line of women’s clothes and accessories whose name is a bit of an inside joke: ‘Cheap & Chic.’

It began, I think, in the go-go ‘90s, when chic was paramount and cheap was a relative term. Its shoes still sell for $600, blouses for $700, handbags for four figures.

But now, at last, bad times are generating good spending decisions. Maybe cheap really is becoming chic. Michelle Obama shops at J. Crew, and on the night she won a Grammy for best Hawaiian album, Tia Carrere dressed for the gala in a $30 EBay dress, a $20 bag from downtown L.A.’s garment district, less than $50 worth of baubles, bangles and beads, and shoes that Carrere said were marked down 75% when she bought them 10 years ago.

Stylist George Blodwell probably set a red carpet record by making the entire ensemble come in at a shade under $100. This edges ever closer to the day when, on some unlikely red carpet, someone asks me, ‘Who did your dress?’ and my answer will be ‘Dahling, of course it’s Bonne Volonte,’ which, with the proper accent, approximately means ‘Goodwill.’

Even Washington seems to be wising up about displaying the appearances and appurtenances of privilege. Years ago, I remember running into Bill Clinton’s attorney general, Janet Reno, holding a coach ticket as we took one of those tarmac shuttles to a plane at Dulles Airport. Everything old is new again. Lo and behold, the Washington Post reports, on Sunday night, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner flew coach from New York to D.C., as did Wolf Blitzer’s wife. And President Obama’s U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, flew the route in reverse a couple of weeks earlier, ditto coach.

With the entire Obama Cabinet flying in the back with the rest of us just-folks passengers, maybe the airline will start giving us free pretzels again.