The designers know that their bags and shoes and vintage jeans and latest to-die-for scrap of silk and cunningly stitched linen are all vastly over-priced. So do many of the high street stores who have been offering quite shameless lookalikes of the latest creations from Prada, Christian Louboutin, Jimmy Choo, Miu Miu and the like.

 

Barratts, Dorothy Perkins, Steve Madden at River Island are all good bets for Marc Jacobs, Christian Louboutin or Miu Miu 'inspired' lookalikes. There are also several online stores like Goddiva which have made it their mission to make celebrity style affordable. Their take on the matter is to offer celebrity clothes ‘…in the style of…’ and their copies are extremely effective and a fraction of the price.

 

Oasis, which sells it's shoes for about fifty quid a pair was taken to court by Tamara Mellon who was put out that a pair of silver wedgies looked a bit too much like one of the Jimmy Choo line. (She won too). Topshop is another high street brand that has made a bit of a name for itself for being 'inspired' by designers. Chloe took them to court and forced them to destroy hundreds of pairs of dungarees plus pay £12,000 in compensation. Oooh. I bet that hurt. NOT! Just think of all that free publicity and all those canny lasses queueing to get stylish clothes for down to earth prices.

 

If over-sized sunglasses are your thing a la Madge and Posh, then you could do worse than to check out Notdesigner.com. Their online store offers sunglasses, jewellery and belts in ' Hollywood inspired' styles. Their slogan is 'Why should looking good cost the earth?'. I must say I couldn't agree more.