You don't have to spend a ton of money on designer accessories every time you make a major clothing purchase, and you don't have to be in a fashion center to find great deals. If you're in the market for handbags Houston is just as good as Los Angeles, and if you need hot new eyeglasses St. Louis has everything New York City does.

What you're buying in a designer accessory is the label. Don't delude yourself into thinking that the couture line of sunglasses has a ten thousand percent quality advantage on the five dollar pair at the pharmacy check stand. Accessories are profit centers for established fashion brands. They do not get the attention that designers give to their premium lines or even the lines they condescend to make for the hoi polloi. They are cheap to fabricate, and they earn a lot of money.

Everybody up and down the fashion food chain loves accessories, not just because they help to accentuate whatever outfit a customer is wearing, but because they mean real cash to those who sell them. A retailer who sells a two hundred and fifty dollar dress to a willing buyer can easily see an additional hundred dollars in accessory sales in order to augment that dress. With a pair of sunglasses retailing for sometimes north of a hundred times the cost of production, there's a lot of profit in the accessory sales for the designers, the retailers, and for all the middlemen along the way.

This is not to take anything away from accessories. They really do add to an outfit. The dress that costs two hundred fifty dollars is probably pretty special...but it looks even more special when it's coupled with accessories that complete the outfit. Since people tend to see in chunks, we tend to be more impressed by the whole outfit than we would be by the dress alone, and since making an impact was probably the reason to spend the money on the dress, it's easy to understand spending a little more for the whole outfit.

But that doesn't mean that you have to get all the accessories at the same place or that you have to be stupid with the splurge. Being smart with the purchase of accessories can get you the same high style impact for far less money, and it can also have a potent psychological effect. If you go to the store, spend a bunch of money on a dress, and then spend a bunch more money on accessories, you're going to leave feeling a little guilty and resentful for having been manipulated into extra purchases. If you buy the dress and then shop sensibly for the accessories, you're going to feel good about the whole experience because you saved money on the extras.

First, make a rule never to buy accessories at the same store that you buy the main course of your outfit. If you make that rule and follow it one hundred percent of the time, you'll end up saving a lot of money because you won't pick up overpriced accessories in the wake of making a major clothing purchase.

Second, make searching for accessories to go with a special dress a sort of game. Create a map of high-end consignment and second-hand stores, brand-name sell-off stores, and department store bargain basements. A good chain of these stores can accessorize pretty much any purchase, and it can be fun to take a run through them.

Third, remember that city fashion centers are more about selling expensive items to tourists than they are about giving you good deals on accessories (or anything else for that matter) so avoid them. If you're after eyeglasses St. Louis will do you just fine. Costume jewelry? Phoenix or Florence, it doesn't make much difference.