'Must-Have' Luxury Accessories & High-End Brands

"Who are you wearing?" - Paris Hilton.

FASHION ACCESSORIES are decorative items that supplement one's garment, such as jewelry, gloves, handbags, hats, belts, scarves, watches, sunglasses, pins, stockings, bow tie, leg warmer, leggings, necktie, suspenders, and tights.

Accessories add color, style and class to an outfit, and create a certain look, but they may also have practical functions. Handbags are for carrying, hats protect the face from weather elements, and gloves keep the hands warm.

It wasn’t until the 1950’s with both world wars behind the western world did fashion accessories come into the limelight again. With accessories such as fruit corsages to adorn one’s sweater or hat women began to accessorize again. The 1950’s also saw the beginning of eyewear being used as fashion accessories with the exaggerated wing tip glasses coming to mind. The 1950’s also saw the rise of the stiletto.

Many accessories are produced by clothing design companies. However, there has been an increase in individuals creating their own brand name by designing and making their own label of accessories.

DESIGNER LABELS on accessories are perceived as an indicator of social status.

In economics, a LUXURY GOOD is a good for which demand increases more than proportionally as income rises, and is a contrast to a "necessity good", for which demand is not related to income.

Luxury goods are said to have high income elasticity of demand: as people become wealthier, they will buy more and more of the luxury good. This also means, however, that should there be a decline in income its demand will drop. Income elasticity of demand is not constant with respect to income, and may change sign at different levels of income. That is to say, a luxury good may become a normal good or even an inferior good at different income levels, e.g. a wealthy person stops buying increasing numbers of luxury cars for his automobile collection to start collecting airplanes (at such an income level, the luxury car would become an inferior good).

• ACCESSORIES COUNCIL - the mission of the Accessories Council is to stimulate consumer awareness and demand for fashion accessory products, and to serve as the advocate of the $30 billion accessory business in the United States.
• ACE AWARDS - the ACE Awards was created in 1996 to pay homage to those individuals and groups that have made great strides in raising the awareness of the accessories industry.
• MEN'S CLOTHING SIZE CONVERSIONS - suits, coats, shirts, pants, hats & shoes: European, UK, Japan & USA.
• WOMEN'S CLOTHING SIZE CONVERSIONS - dresses, suits, blouses, sweaters, bras & shoes: European, UK, Japan & USA.