Payless Shoes Goes Designer with Abaete

Payless Shoes Goes Designer with Abaete
Fashion awareness is clearly on the rise.

It doesn't matter what your job, how much money you make, where you live, what magazines you read or, frankly, who you are - everyone wants to wear designer clothing.

Target is no longer good enough for the masses, it has to be Issac Mizrahi - or better still - Luella Bartley for Target.

EasySpirit shoes? Only if Tara Subkoff designed them.

Even H&M, the super-trendy, super-affordable Swedish brand that loves to knock off designers, realized the amount of influence signing on designer powerhouses Karl Lagerfeld and then Stella McCartney would have on sales.

Not only did it boost the company's sales, it also increased the brand's "fashion" credibility - if you can hook Karl, you can do anything.

It also brought designer awareness to an all time high, thus raising the fashion bar for civilians all around the world.

Now that the bar has been reset, more and more mainstream brands have thought of ways to re-"design" their product and call lesser-known, but very promising designers onboard.

Case in point: Laura Poretzky, the designer of Abaet�, a two year old label that started out as swimwear and quickly evolved into ready-to-wear, has just designed a capsule line of shoes for Payless.

While Laura Poretzky may not be a name that everyone throughout the country