Cut from the same cloth, these dresses are poles apart - in price

Designers are sewing for the masses, creating less expensive lines to catch more of the market.BOTH are flirty, fun and feminine and carry the vintage-inspired signature of designer Fleur Wood. Only close inspection will reveal the big difference between the dresses: the one on the right costs less than half that on the left.The cheaper dress is from the Sydney designer's new Fleurette range, a lower-priced daywear collection of pretty floral frocks, cotton blouses and flowing skirts that sit alongside her eponymous brand at Myer.
Wood has joined the growing number of Australian designers who are launching cheaper lines - or ''diffusion'' to use the preferred term - in a bid to leverage their brand in a competitive market of fast fashion, shrinking profits and changing consumer demands.''I think fashion is changing,'' says Wood. ''Women like to mix fast fashion and designer labels together, high-end with more accessible pieces. For us a diffusion line also accesses a new customer, who is perhaps not a regular fashion buyer but wants to buy a designer piece.''
In recent years, retailers Myer and David Jones have housed diffusion lines such as NF by Nicola Finetti, Maticevski Sweethearts, Hi There by Karen Walker, Wayne Cooper Brave and Leona By Leona Edmiston.Banks Profit From Mentoring Small Businesses in Need of a Jump Start.They are created in collaboration with in-store designers, produced offshore with cheaper fabrics and fewer embellishments to keep costs low.''Often customers can't quite afford the price points so this is a way for us to spread the brand into a wider number of stores and to leverage the DNA of the brand that has been built over a number of years,'' says Myer's head of merchandise, Judy Coomber.
Designer Jayson Brunsdon, best known for his glamorous party frocks and evening gowns, last year launched a Black Label range of dresses from $100 to $350 at Myer.If done well, diffusion lines can be an effective compromise, he says.''Everyone knows the money is in cheaper clothing and more disposable clothing. It was something I'd been thinking about for a while because there is only so much room in Australia for high fashion. We don't have a very large population and consequently not a very large market for high fashion. It's been increasingly difficult to export overseas because of the GFC and the exchange rate, so we needed to grow and this was the way to do it.''