$50 Rodarte for Target dress sells for $250 on eBay. Sigh.

I've loved many of the designer collaborations for Target, H&M and other low-end retail stores. How awesome is it to buy designer labels for affordable prices? But the more trendy and popular these diffusion lines become, the less likely you are to get your hands on the goods for cheap.

Yesterday the Rodarte collection went on sale at Target stores nationwide and on Target.com. I logged on to their website around noon, hoping to score this sequin ribcage dress ($49.99) and one of the lace cardigans ($29.99), but both were already sold out. In fact, nearly every single one of the 55-piece collection was out of stock. Darn, already? Buying into the hype, I logged on to my eBay account to see if any pieces had made their way to auction. Yup! 284 Rodarte for Target items were listed. I added the ribcage dress in a size medium to my "watching" list on eBay, but it ended up selling for $251.50. There's another dress listed with less than an hour to go, and it's already over $100.

Perhaps I'm naive, but this makes me sad. The whole point of these collaborations is to make designer items accessible to anyone. Not only have these garments become so desirable that they instantly sell out, people are buying them in droves to re-sell them for a profit and driving the price up higher than the average Target shopper would want to pay. Because fashion slaves are willing and able to shell out hundreds of dollars for a dress that retails for $49.99, those of us who were excited to get a cool designer piece in our budget are no longer able to. Should I have camped out overnight to ensure I could buy one of these dresses at Target for it's original retail cost? I'm sorry, but it's just not worth it to me. If I stumble on one re-stocked down the line, I will buy one, but this incident has left me disenchanted with these diffusion lines for the moment.