Well, here’s a way you can be in with a chance to get your designs made professionally and sold online. Velvet Brigade lets anyone submit their designs, then users vote on which designs are best and after 30 days Velvet Brigade will choose a winner for each week.

Even if you’ve merely been looking for a new way to find stylish new outfits, The Velvet Brigade is for you. Create an account and start voting on your favourite designs, then when the time comes you can buy the winning designs straight from the store.

Voters

The voters are the fashionistas which make all the big decisions around Velvet Design. Create an account using Facebook or your own details and you can get straight into it. All your votes are collected on your profile so you can browse them whenever you like and show off your fantastic fashion sense to your friends.

Designers

Designers are the life blood of Velvet Brigade. Without new designs there’d be nothing to vote on and no clothes to make. Anyone can become a designer – it simply requires you to submit a decent sketch of your garment. Winning designs are created for sale and the designer receives 5% of the sales proceeds via cheque or PayPal. Anyone worldwide can be a designer, so what are you waiting for?

To become a designer, take a read of the designer guide and create your sketch, then submit to Velvet Design for approval. When your design is approved (within 3 days) you can promote it to your friends and networks. You’ll have 30 days to collect as many votes as you can for your design before the voting phase expires. Every week, Velvet Design explores the designs which have just finished their voting phase, then chooses a winner according to votes and self-promotion of the garment. If your design wins, they’ll make your design and sell it through the Velvet Design site.

Ideas For The Future

Velvet Design is still in beta, so there’s plenty of room to play with ideas at this stage. My personal opinion is that Velvet Design should help users to promote their favourite designs a little more, by offering RSS feeds for each user. It would also be great for Velvet Design to suggest a more visual way of sharing designs with other social networks – at the moment they suggest sharing a simple link, whereas an option to share the picture on something like Tumblr would do more to share each design.

It would also be great to offer an HTML/Javascript badge showing a user’s most recent votes which users could promote on their own website. Basically, Velvet Design should attempt to do whatever it takes to keep the voters voting, and I think that allowing the voters to show off their great taste is an easy way to achieve this.

More Fashion

If you love your clothes, you’ll love these articles too:

• Do You Have A Photo Of A Great Fashion Item? Here Is How To Find Out Where To Get It!
• Use Polyvore To Create Or Find A New Fashion Style For Yourself
• 5 Cool Fashion Newsletters You Should Subscribe To If You’re A Geek
• 5 Stylish Websites For Women
• 5 Style Websites To Buy Cheap Trendy Clothes

So, will you be submitting a design to Velvet Brigade soon?

Well, now it’s possible. Where To Get It is a service which lets you upload a picture of the clothes you’re looking at and let other people identify those fashion items and tell you where you can buy them. Other fashionistas browsing the site will attempt to find the item and let you know where you can buy it. Then all you have to do is click and purchase. It’s armchair shopping at its absolute finest.

Join Where To Get It

Signing up to Where To Get It is quick and simple. Either create an account manually or sign in with Facebook. Either way, it takes no time at all.

Ask Where To Get It

Grab a picture of that outfit you’re looking for and ask where to get it. It’s a simple process – you upload a picture, let them know vaguely where you found it (ie: from marketing, celebrity photo, a blogger, etc.) and then let everyone know exactly which item it is in the picture that you’re looking for. Then you’re set. Click on “Add Yours” to get started.

Automatically, you’re listed as following the “look”, so you will be notified when people find your item.

Follow More Looks

While you’re browsing around the site, you’re likely to find a few more items you like. To be notified of where to get them, just click on “Follow This Look” and you’ll be told of all the options to find that look.

Share Your Looks

With your own requests to identify fashion items, or with any other look you like, you can post a link to Facebook or Twitter, sharing your search request to all your friends to see if they know how to find it.

Embark on Quests

If you’re keen to help people find clothing items, click on either “Popular Quests” or “New Quests“. Browse away until you find something you’ve seen before, then you can help them find it.

Or if you want to look at particular items, search for colours or clothing types in the search box. Don’t worry, browsing comes naturally. Once you click on an item, you’re shown “Other Interesting Looks” which are similar to the one you’re looking at.

You can also help people by voting up and down the responses other people have posted.

If You Know Where To Find Something

If you’ve managed to find an item someone is looking for, you can contribute a link to Where To Get It. Just post the link, the cost and any other details you feel necessary. Even if it’s not exactly right, upload it as an option. The person who was looking for the item is often happy to find something almost the same as the photo.

How Where To Get It Works

This site is run on goodwill, presuming that fashionistas will browse the site for their own fashion ideas and help people out when they can. There’s also a little bit of competition to give the most advice. Weekly leaders are prominently displayed on the right hand side of the main page. Obviously, if they help the site to be more active, it means that their own questions will be more likely to get answered.

Where Else Could You Find It?

If you’re looking to identify specific fashion items, currently the only other way is to use an image search like Tin Eye or to ask your friends via social networks and blogs. You might not know many fashionistas or you just might not attract the attention of anyone who has the time to answer you. It’s pretty slow going. With Where To Get It, your request is seen by people who genuinely care about fashion and want to help.

More Fashion Reading

If all you want to do is browse fashion sites, here’s some more you’ll love.

• Use Polyvore To Create Or Find A New Fashion Style For Yourself
• 5 Stylish Websites For Women
• 5 Style Websites To Buy Cheap Trendy Clothes
• 9 Sites With The Latest Fashion Trends For Fashion Maniacs

Would you use Where To Get It? How else do you look for fashion items? Let us know in the comments!

If you’re a fairly fashion-dumb person (like me) the need for this may not be immediately obvious. But even those who don’t care much for fashion can benefit from this. I don’t care a lot about clothes, so I often find myself forgetting what I own. If you have a similar problem, or you have a massive array of clothing to catalog and you don’t know where to start when it comes to how to organize clothes, there are some wardrobe managers that can help.

HomyFads Wardrobe Manager

This beautifully simple wardrobe management software is a free download and does not require any online registration. Once you’ve installed HomyFads, you can create a wardrobe, which appears in a three-column layout. The left column contains the categories of clothing you’ve created, the middle category contains thumbnail photographs of your clothing, and the right column lets you view and add details about the clothing you own.

Like all of the wardrobe management methods listed here, this is a photo-based program. You will need to take photos of your clothing in order to add them (although I suppose you could fudge it by using placeholder photos, if you feel this won’t cause confusion). There is no apparent limit on the number of items you can add, and because this program is entirely local, you can browse through your wardrobe quickly even if you’ve taken high-resolution photos.

There is no social media or online functionality built into HomyFads, so you’ll have to look elsewhere if you want to share your wardrobe or browse stores for new clothing. This drawback has its advantages however, as HomyFads is by far the easiest and quickest wardrobe manager listed here.

Shmotter

The clearly female-centric Shmotter is a busy online wardrobe management tool that puts an emphasis on social media. It can, if you’d like, be used as a basic utility for storing photos of your clothing and arranging them to keep them organized.

However, Shmotter puts a heavy focus on outfits. You can drag any items – either those you own or those available from the site’s partners – into the outfit feature, mixing and matching as you please.  Once you’ve put together something you like you can share it with friends using Twitter or Facebook. Outfits are also shared automatically over the Shmotter network, which means that everyone will be able to see  an outfit that you put together and rate it. Top-rated outfits are automatically shown on the front page, presumably so you can borrow from them if you’d like.

I do wish the Shmotter website was more organized, as it is a bit of a mess compared to something like HomyFads, the perfect picture of user-friendly simplicity. Still, it does its job and will probably appeal to the fashion-conscious more readily than HomyFads.

ClosetBank

ClosetBank is another online wardrobe management tool, and it has many similarities and differences when compared to Shmotter. When it comes to basic wardrobe management, ClosetBank is the better of the two, as it has a more robust wardrobe overview and lets you add more information about your clothing. The interface of the website is a bit better overall, as well, although still far from the brilliance of HomyFads.

On the other hand, the outfit creation part of ClosetBank (called “dress up”) is clearly inferior to Shmotter. The menu-based method of adding clothing is obtuse and the execution proved buggy in Google Chrome. And while ClosetBank does link to a number of websites on its front page, it doesn’t let you automatically add clothing sold by its partners into your outfits. You must find an image of the clothing you want to add online, download it to your computer, and then upload it to the site.

Conclusion

Personally, I find HomyFads to be the best of the wardrobe management tools here, but that’s probably because I’m not much for fashion and I don’t care about making or sharing outfits. If that’s something that appeals to you, I suggest trying out both Shmotter and ClosetBank – both have their advantages and disadvantages.

If you know of any better ways how to organize clothes with your PC, let us know in the comments.

Polyvore lets you quickly piece together a look from a great selection of fashion items, allowing you to show off your fashion taste and even enter competitions with your stylish creations. It’s a lot of fun and could be useful for anyone who wants to create or find a new look for themselves.

Get Started

Signing up is easy “” especially if you want to use your Facebook login. You can be creating in seconds! Jump right in and make a set.

Creating a set is very straightforward. If you need a little help, there’s a handy video you can watch to show you a few tricks.

Also try creating a collection “” these contain sets either made by yourself or other people. Just keep adding the looks you like!

Handy tip: Add the clipper bookmarklet to your browser so you can add to your favourites any items you see elsewhere on the web.

Explore

The Explore page is a great way to learn about fashion, enter competitions, see new sets that are up-and-coming, and to generally start your search for interesting fashion items.

It’s also where you can see slightly different creations, like the interior design sets. It seems everyone uses Polyvore in their own way, meaning many new things to explore!

You also may like to browse the site simply as a store for shopping.

Follow any lead you like and it will take you on a journey through the site. Follow a trend, brand, set, person – whatever – and you will find many more interlinked from each page. When you find a particular item you like, you can see the sets and collections it features in, similar products, more clothes by that designer and much more. It’s also very easy to save the product as a favourite or simply buy it. Favourites are a great way to keep track of things you frequently want to add to sets or things you’re keen to buy.

Interact

There are so many things to do on Polyvore. As well as simply creating your own sets and collections, you can join groups, ask for style advice, enter competitions for virtual trophies or real prizes and even create your own competitions. Along the way, you’ll probably meet some like-minded friends.

Want to come up with a great outfit for an upcoming event? Either ask the style gurus for advice or start a competition to get people brainstorming for you!

Share

Everything you create on Polyvore can be shared via Facebook, Twitter, email, Tumblr, RSS or embedding on your blog. You can even create a mini-editor to embed on your blog so that your blog visitors can have a got at creating a set too!

About Polyvore

Polyvore is all about creating stylish, user-generated, shareable content. With the great team at Polyvore and the big designers and celebrities backing Polyvore, such as Katy Perry, Kate Moss, Yves Saint Laurent and Nordstrom, there’s always great fashion to be found on this site. By using the clipper to add your finds to your favourites, you are expanding the possibilities even further.

This site is great fun for anyone with even a passing interest in fashion “” teens especially will love it. Guys don’t have many clothes listed in Polyvore as the girls do, but if you get busy with the clipper tool guys can have just as much fun!

More Fashion Reading

If you love fashion and style, you’ll love reading these:

• 5 Cool Fashion Newsletters You Should Subscribe To If You’re A Geek
• RestyleMe: Get Style Advice From Others
• 5 Stylish Websites For Women
• 5 Style Websites To Buy Cheap Trendy Clothes
• 9 Sites With The Latest Fashion Trends For Fashion Maniacs
• GoTryItOn: Social Network Where You Can Get Honest Fashion Advice

If you’ve just joined, show off your new Polyvore sets in the comments!

Plus, who decides what counts as trendy? Or cheap? Some stores love to tell you that they’re cheap, when they’re merely cheaper. Reducing a $2,000 item to $1,500 is still a bargain, but it’s clearly not cheap.

When compiling this list, price factored highly. If you can’t buy a decent selection of clothes and shoes for $30-$35 in the store then it doesn’t feature in the list.

Style was the other all-important consideration: t-shirt shops, frumpy old-lady wear, celebrity imitators and anything remotely trashy-looking lost its chance to feature on the list. What’s left is a selection of quality stores, with designer-styled clothing at reasonable prices. Oh and guys, don’t be daunted by all the women’s clothes – consider them potential Christmas presents. Time to get shopping!

1. A’Gaci

A’Gaci is a fashionista’s dream, with plenty of cheap clothes for the fashionable girl. Browse by trend, outfit, or the usual pants, accessories, shoes categories. If you shop by trend, you get a page much like a magazine, with links to all the products. They really make it easy to find new bargains!

A’Gaci in fact really surprised me, because it even had some cute and classy homecoming dresses for $30-$35. Take a look!

2. Forever 21

With a whole section dedicated to men, Forever 21 is the most gender-balanced store on the list. At least half of the men’s jackets fell into the $30-$35 range, t-shirts and other smaller items are far cheaper. For girls, prices are just as cheap. You can find incredibly cute dresses, shoes and other items easily for $30 and under.

3. Make Me Chic

Make Me Chic has a great selection of dresses, boots, pants, fancy dress costumes, swimwear and all sorts of women’s clothing. This shop is surprising, since it’s quite difficult to find anything over $30 at all. Even more surprising is that someone with taste is behind it, meaning these bargain-priced clothes are actually quite good looking. Very much worth a look!

4. Asos

Asos is every fashion magazine-lover’s dream come true. Browse through to any interesting headline and you’ll either find a page full of great products to buy, a feature article on fashion or a page of style ideas with suggested products. What’s even better is that “” unlike reading a magazine “” you can click through on these products to a page where you can buy them. Fantastic! Not all of it’s rock-bottom cheap though, so make sure you check out the sales.

5. Cutesy Girl

Cutesy girl is “” sorry guys “” just for the girls, but fits the bill for women’s cheap clothing needs. Navigation on this site is really easy. Under any general section (shoes, apparel, etc.) you can filter by item or size. Then, you can filter further using the sidebar options for specific attributes or brands. This makes for some quick easy shopping. It also seems, no matter how far you narrow down your search there’s still a huge selection of products to choose from.

Bonus Store: Fashion Remix

I nearly didn’t feature Fashion Remix because so much of the stock is way over the $35 mark. However, it does make it very easy for you to find the cheaper items. Look at what’s on sale, then narrow it down even further by clicking on your favourite designer, colour or other feature. In the sale section, this fantastic designer store can definitely provide cheap fashion for you. Here you’ll find goods for guys too!

Want More?

If you’re still shopping for that perfect bargain, you can always take a look at eBay and Amazon. Both of these mega-giant retailers feature a great selection of cheap, trendy clothes. Check out the sales!

If you’re keen for more fashion-oriented reading, check out these posts:

• 9 Sites with the Latest Fashion Trends for Fashion Maniacs.
• FashionAdExplorer: Browse the latest Fashion Ads.
• 5 Stylish Websites for Women.
• GoTryItOn: Social Network For Honest Fashion Advice.
• Have You Bought A MakeUseOf T-shirt Yet? (this is the height of geek-chic fashion!)

Please feel free to let us know your favourite cheap fashion store in the comments.

Along with this trend, geeky fashion has found its way into the limelight. One of the latest example is Jil Sander’s Fall 2010 campaign, which features pale male and female models with bare makeup, thick glasses, and geek-chic-style attire from Jil Sander’s current collection (image below). In other words, it’s hip to be smart and vice versa.

Do you feel like it’s time to break out of your outdated fashion habits and brush up on your geeky style? Gather some inspiration with these 5 cool fashion newsletters and a selection of style guides that also work for geeks.

For The Boys

The Chic Geek

The Chic Geek is “an independent online men’s style magazine for any man interested in his personal appearance.” Besides fashion and grooming news, the site also features helpful ‘how to’ articles, and Geekpedia, which reveals the meaning of common fashion terms.

Subscribe via monthly email newsletter (form on the far right).

The Fashionisto

Men’s fashion is far less complicated than the female equivalent. The rules are strict, the shoes tend to be comfy, and no major worrying about matching makeup or accessories. The Fashionisto is a simple website that features the latest in menswear and trends.

Subscribe via FeedBurner.

If you are totally lost in the world of fashion, you will appreciate the Newbie Fashion Tips for Grown-Up Men.

Unisex

Eco Fashion World

Eco Fashion World aims to inspire its readers with new ideas, ideals, and information. Although the fashion they promote is green, it is no less fashionable. It’s fashion for people who think forward and embrace new developments. How could a geek not fit this description?

Subscribe via email newsletter.

H&M

The Swedish clothing company Hennes & Mauritz, better known as H&M, is known for its ‘fast fashion’, i.e. a fast transfer of catwalk trends into affordable store collections. They have fashion and accessories for men, women, teenagers, and children. If you need to shop style in all sizes on a budget, H&M is one of the best choices.

While you can subscribe to the store newsletter, my actual recommendation would be to check out their style guide for girls and guys.

Subscribe via email newsletter.

For The Girls

Fashion Magazine

While the latest fashion trends can be quite intimidating for women, they can be much more creative than men. Fortunately, designers accommodate this freedom with a host of different styles and items to go along with them. Fashion Magazine covers all aspects of fashion, including fragrances, jewelry, and gadgets.

Subscribe via email newsletter or other FeedBurner options.

Fashion remains a  sensible and difficult terrain for both men and women. However, once you found your style and know how to keep it going, it can become a fun way to express yourself. What is unique about your own style and do you care about the latest fashion at all?

Image credit: davdibiase