You love the luxe look of Donna Karan`s clothes but not the $500 to $2,500 price tags.
And Ralph Lauren`s crisp blazers? The cost of just one outfit could bankrupt you.
If you know your way around a sewing machine you can have both looks-albeit without the designer`s fancy label-for a fraction of the cost.
Consider Lauren`s fall `91 line. His red and blue Douglas plaid jacket, with wide-notched collar and fit-and-flare princess seaming, would set you back $750 if you bought it in a store.
Make it in a similar wool and the cost comes to $113 complete, and that includes the $17.50 you`ll need for Vogue pattern No. 2780, a line-for-line copy of the original jacket. (The pattern also carries instructions for Lauren`s tapered pants.)
Similarly, you could buy the designer`s red cavalry twill military dress for $1,400. Make it, and it`s $203 complete, with the help of Vogue pattern No. 2782.
If you haven`t the time or the inclination to make your own outfits, a dressmaker can sew a designer wardrobe for you. The price will still be hundreds of dollars less than if you bought the clothes ready-made.
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In vogue
Vogue Patterns is the leader in the line-for-line field. There are about 40 designers, domestic and international, in the Vogue stable. Flip through the pattern book and you`ll see styles by Bill Blass, Donna Karan, Anne Klein, Geoffrey Beene, Calvin Klein, Karl Lagerfeld, Yves Saint Laurent and Issey Miyake, among others. The patterns run from $10 to $17.50.
Other pattern companies promote manufacturers` clothes (Simplicity has Belle France, for example, McCall`s features Gitano designs, and Butterick has J.G. Hook) and patterns inspired by the most popular designers. While you won`t see Armani`s name in McCall`s pattern book, you will see adaptations of his long, lean, unlined silky jackets.
But for an exact duplicate of a well-known designer`s clothes, you`ll need a Vogue pattern.
The garments photographed in the Vogue catalog are the designer`s originals, says a Vogue spokeswoman, with accessories to show the total look. The designer supplies the outfit and the actual pattern to Vogue so they can reproduce it. Garments can show up in pattern form as early as six months from the time a designer shows it in his ready-to-wear collection.
Before featuring a design, pattern companies make sure fabrics similar to the original are available to home sewers so they can duplicate the look.