It's become sexy to be cheap.
It's become smart and enviable to shop well and live within your means.

Shhhhhh! The celebrities in Hollywood just found this out so now, it has become all the rage.

According to Carmen Wong Ulrich, who writes a delicious new column for Money Mag, "where you put your dollars says a lot about who you are and what you think." Here's a quote:

It's official. Vogue magazine, the home of $4,475 Louis Vuitton coats, has the following three headlines on its most recent (July) cover:


-The Price Is Right: Strategies for Shopping the Trends on Budget
-Cost-Effective Beauty and Fitness
-Buy Now, Wear Forever: Clean, Lean Clothes that Are Always in Style


Even this month's Elle has formally dipped in its toes with a "High/Low" style and culture guide that presents the genius of mixing $15 American Apparel T-shirts and Bottega Venetta bags that cost as much as a Toyota Yaris.

Movie stars and models now discuss their love of $15 T-shirts as a matter of pride. For many of us, it's the norm. Pride is getting that $15 shirt for $5.99 at the outlet mall. This cultural trend, a high-end validated shift-to-thrift, is a first as far back as I can remember. Recession after recession, when was it ever cool for upwardly-mobile rich folks to shop "…on a budget"?

Leave it to the celebs to put a spin on using less. America has become a nation of less. So, in order to compensate the downturn, the power moguls have made it chic to be cost-sensitive.

We're using less. (prices are too, too high)

We're buying less. (money is too expensive to part with)

We're eating less. (restaurants have cut their meal size. food distributors have shrunken package size)

What a fantastic idea to make it chic to be cheap! Wish I had thought of it. Come to think of it, I have. Back in 2005 when I bought my first Ford Focus, the salesman told me he considered that car "a car for the lower classes." Thanks, Mr. Salesman. Today, my new '08 Ford Focus has been rated the top third car being sold in the United States. It's the car that America is loving 'third best'. When I pull up to an event in my Ford Focus, I'm the envy of the crowd. Who would have thunk? With 44mpg and not shelling out thousands more dollars for a hybrid, my little $16,500 car has become all the new rage.

Go figure.

No body is laughing anymore at frugality. No one is turning down their noses to living in smaller houses, wearing outfits from Target or donning shoes from Payless. (guilty of the latter) If it takes a celebrity to make frugality the norm, then so be it. Who wants to argue with the new success?

Just like Carmen, I kinda like it.

And so it goes.