Even the least fashion-savvy amongst us would probably be able to tell these two dresses apart: there’s just no disguising a Roland Mouret, is there? Unfortunately for us, however, there’s just no way of paying for one either, so until our Fairy Godmother comes along to wave her magic wand, we’ll just have to content ourselves with this ASOS version of Mouret’s famous pleat neck dress. Well, the ASOS version is only £45, you see, and the Mouret is no longer available, and even if it was, it’s not like we’d be able to afford it on a police officer’s salary, so ASOS it is!
There’s one problem, though: the Mouret dress is from the Spring/Summer 2006 collection, so wearing it will probably cause fashion victims to look down their noses and declare it to be “SO last season!” Annoying fashion victims is one of our favourite hobbies, though, so we’d actually see that as a plus…
The ASOS dress is also available in blue and yellow: click here if you want to buy one.
Pictures of Freida Pinto looking gorgeous in a pale pink dress on Jimmy Fallon earlier this week had our officers sratching their heads for a second, and thinking, “Wait… is she wearing… Closet?”
Of course, she wasn’t. Freida was, in fact, wearing a dress from Victoria Beckham’s Spring/Summer 2011 collection, which, like the rest of the Victoria Beckham line, is beautiful, but not exactly realistically priced for those of us who aren’t on celebrity salaries. Most of the dress collection, for instance, retails from £900 – £1,500, with some pieces costing more.
Enter Closet, with their pink asymmetric neck dress, which… look, we’re not going to beat around the bush, here: it’s damn near identical, isn’t it? In fact, we can’t spot a single difference, other than the one on the price tag, which, while we’re on the subject, is £27 down from the original £45 at A|Wear.
So, what do you think, Fashion Jurors? Would you buy Victoria Beckham or Closet? Or would you buy neither?
Shoeperwoman spotted this case of Shoe Deja Vu for us: the shoes on the left of the image above are Charlotte Olympia’s ‘Bananas is My Business’ platform pumps, the ones on the right are Jeffrey Campbell’s Fruit Bowl shoes, and while it’s true to say that one is never going to be mistaken for the other, with the JC version looking inferior in every way, it’s also true to say that the fruit placement is so identical (melon on the toe, bananas on the side, strawberries on the heel) as to make simple coincidence seem highly unlikely.
You know what puzzles us most about this case, readers? The fact that, at $70, the Bakers shoes are:
a) Not exactly “cheap”.
b) Only $10 less than the sale price of the Betsey Johnson originals.
We’re assuming there are enough points of difference for Bakers not to get in trouble over this, but there aren’t enough for it not to be blatantly obvious what they’re up to, hmm?
Polka dots are going to be big this summer. Bigger than they usually are, we mean. Polka dots tend to be one of those prints that never really go away, don’t they? This season, however, more than one big-name designer has decided to make use of them, and that means the high street has been quick to follow suit. We’ve already shown you Zara’s take on Marc Jacobs’ polka dot dress, and now here’s BooHoo’s version of Miu Miu’s (and hey, they even sound kinda similar!) polka dot shorts.
One pair is £170, and the other just £6. Given that they both look a bit like something you’d wear to bed to us, we’d probably spend £6 on the BooHoo version, and then have £164 to spend on shoes, but that’s just us. Which would you go for?
This is technically a case of Stuck Together Clothes: they’re dresses, but they’re masquerading as skirt/sweater combos – and goodness knows, it’s hard to pair a black skirt with a black sweater, isn’t it, readers?
Ignoring the flagrant breach of the “skirts should be skirts and tops should be tops” rule for the moment, however, let’s take a look at the similarities between these two dresses. The one on the left is by Theory, it’s a leather/wool mix, and it’s £555 at Net-a-Porter. The one on the right, meanwhile, is good ol’ Topshop, and while the skirt is also leather, the top half is jersey, rather than wool. It’s also significantly cheaper, at just £70, and is lacking the batwing sleeves of the Theory dress.
Which do you prefer, though? Would you choose designer or high street: or would you chose neither?
Closet aren’t the first brand to “be inspired” by Victoria Beckhams’ Carmontelle peplum dress: they’re simply the most recent. Still, in the interests of policing the world of fashion, let the record reflect that the dress on the right of the image above looks very much like the one on the left, with one of the main differences being that you’ll only pay £30 for the copy (Click here to buy it from Dorothy Perkins), while the original would’ve set you back £2,095 – if, of course, it hadn’t been an almost-instant sell-out.
Closet’s dress has a shorter skirt and some different tailoring on the bodice: which do you prefer (if either)?
