College duds for fashion honor roll
By DIANA RANSOM

With jeans in hand, Stony Brook University student Christina Merritt will continue shopping for sweaters, button-down shirts and sneakers.

"My whole summer job went straight to my wardrobe," said Merritt, who isn't done yet.

She said she still needs to purchase sweaters, button-down shirts and cute sneakers like Pumas, Adidas or Converse.

Like most students eagerly preparing for school, she wants to be properly outfitted for the fall without spending more than she expected to spend. That means buying clothes that have a designer look without the couture price tag, and buying accessories that can travel from one season to the next.

"The number one fashion statement for back-to-school is denim," said image consultant Elena Castaneda, owner of New York Image Consultant.

They are as basic as a white T-shirt or a little black dress, and they never go out of style. This season, however, looking fashionable in your denim may require a bit more attention to detail than it has in the past.

"I've been going crazy over jeans," said Jenni Schuman, 23, Corporate Communications Major at Baruch College. "A lot of jeans are, like, $200. What are they made of, special denim?"

Realizing the need to look fashionable for less, Merritt bought herself a $29 pair of hipsters from American Eagle Outfitters at a fraction of the price she would have spent on jeans with a designer label and a similar look.

Expecting the huge demand for denim, retailers like American Eagle, Abercrombie & Fitch and Gap have stuffed their sales floor shelves full of jeans.

Retailers learned a valuable lesson this spring. Many stores like Abercrombie & Fitch didn't stock enough jeans and lost sales because of it, analysts said. To curb this, Howard Tubin of Cathay Financial said, retailers are increasing their inventory of jeans and others like American Eagle and Gap are marking them down to spur even more traffic.

"I'm not talking a Gap jean," said Castaneda.

Hoping to cash in, "both Abercrombie and American Eagle are offering new fits and new styles and they are offering more distressed or destroyed denim than they had this spring," said Tubin, whose company doesn't own any shares in either retailer. "That's it, it's new fits, new washes and new styles."

Destroyed jeans have pre-made holes, patches or loose threads.

If you really want to make a back-to-school statement, Castaneda said, the look this year is more about finding jeans that fit, offers unique details and doesn't eat away at your summer job savings.

New York Image Consultant owner Elena Castaneda offers this advice for picking fashionable jeans for the new school year:

Check out the hardware. Interesting pocketing is where jeans stand out. Look for unusual seams and metal attachments by the pockets.

Keep the calves covered. A little longer is better than too short. You'll want to give yourself a generous break in jeans that you can wear with various shoes.

Beware of overly cut-up jeans. Instead of stonewashed distressed, you should look for a graduated "Ombre" wash, which is a kind of shading that goes from light to darker down to the bottom. Fading on the side and on the rear can make you appear thinner.

Don't buy if they're stiff. If a pair of jeans can practically stand up on its own, it's going to stand away from your body, and it's going to be uncomfortable. The softer, more pliable, the jeans is to the touch the better they will mold to your body.

Allow for none to minimal stretch. Usually jeans without stretch hold their shape better. The problem with stretch jeans is if there is too much they lose their shape too quickly.