SLEEK CHIC

Regarding “Working Class”--you are talking about 1% of the working population. What about an article on the other 99% of us who order their panty hose from catalogues, shop red-tag sales and wait for the one-day sales at department stores? The majority of us working women spend less all year than just one of your beautifully modeled outfits.

HELENE S. RUBIN

Walnut

Alas, the high cost of high style is a fact of life in today’s economy. However, a quick explanation of how the fashion business works seems called for: High-style designers are heavily influenced by street fashion (that is, what fashionable young models or assistants find to wear at thrift stores and swap meets), and interpretations of these looks are presented in their high-priced lines. Quickly, designers of mid-priced lines reinvent these high-cost clothes in more affordable versions, and then these mid-priced designs are manufactured, perhaps a year later, for low-cost outlets. Whatever the fashion, eventually it goes out of style and winds up in thrift stores or at garage sales, where the cycle begins again.

By reading about fashion at its creative source, readers who desire to look fashionable will know what to select, whether shopping the pricey boutique or the thrift store. And to clear up any misconception--much to the collective disappointment of the women photographed in “Working Class,” they were not permitted to keep the clothes they modeled.

--THE EDITORS