A euro for thought

With the dollar's exchange rate gone to shit, and with much of the fashion market for both men's and woman's wear seemingly overwhelmed with luxe level price points, could a change be on the horizon? As the women's collections come to an end this week in Paris, I can't help but wonder who is going to pay for all of this come late January/early February when the first shipments of S/S08 begin to arrive in stores. Will designers begin switching to local materials for the F/W08 collections? Will Marc Jacobs run late again because of late arriving samples from Italy? Or will be utilize local means of production to both cut costs and save time? What does it mean for the rest of us?

One guess is that Americans simply won't buy as much foreign designed clothing next year. Could this signal the beginning of the end of the It bag phenomenon for American women? If anything, the prices of these bags have steadily increased. And they're mainly from Euro-designers, where now the dollar means so very little. What about folks like Tom Ford? His NYC store runs its business in relation with Zegna, an Italian company. Will the cost of his kind of already expensive suits skyrocket because it costs so damn much to pay for the wool and cashmere? Perhaps people might even wear clothes from last S/S (gasp!) this next season--at the end of the day, a pair of shorts is, well, a pair of shorts.

But what does the current down slide of the dollar mean for American fashion?