Payless Sprucing Up Designer Collection

The venerable cheap shoe chain, Payless, has been growing its portfolio of designer collaboration over the years. Initially, it started with Abaeté and Patricia Fields (famed stylist of Sex and the City), and it has now expanded to include two other brands: Lela Rose and Christian Siriano.

Payless is starting to shape up to be in step with other retail chains who have teemed up with high end designers for exclusive collections. Most recently, Alexander McQueen released his collection for Target, although personally I found his designs to be pretty underwhelming.

It does make you wonder why would designers make a collaboration with Payless. The quality of the shoes isn’t exactly top grade. I’ve bought several pairs from Payless of the Fioni brand, after wearing it a few times, the color starts to rub or peel off, which wasn’t surprising. So to think to pay $50 a pair for reknown fashion brands like Abaete and Alice +Olivia without comfort and long lasting quality…it’s not going to be worth it. But who knows, perhaps the designer collection are fabricated differently.

Whatever the case, Payless is shaping up to be more than just a simple shoe retailer. The unfortunate thing is that the designer collections are only available at certain Payless shoe stores…which is strange since, well, if these designers want their collections to be offered to the mass public, why is Payless making them exclusive and elusive??