Dry cleaning…so floppy-bowtie-and-sneakers-with-suits 80s Working Girl. Not only are the chemicals bad for the earth and the humans on it, but dry cleaning bills can be costlier than a gold-digging mistress. But no more. Budget-friendly fashion chain The Limited recently introduced the L3 Travel Suit, a well-priced suit made from a wool/polyester/lycra blend that is machine-washable. Not surprisingly, within the first week of launch, sales of the skirt, pant and blazer trio – available in black, navy plaid and a pinstripe - way exceeded expectations. "Throw it in the washer, throw it in the dryer, throw it in your bag, throw it on and look fabulous," Scott Razek, the VP of Marketing told WWD. "You are not compromising fashion for this terrific benefit of not dry cleaning. The technical benefits are not the first thing you notice — you notice that it's a great-looking suit." Although budget friendly – the skirt is $70, pants are $90, and the blazer $180 – the innovative fabric is the product of pricey & extensive lab tests. "It was nearly two years in the process of developing not only shell and lining fabrics, but also all of the internal pieces, including the glues," explains David Feig, VP of Marketing for Bagir, the Israeli manufacturer behind the technology. After 30 rounds in the washer & dryer, the suits were assessed extensively, and eventually yielded superior results to suits that had been dry-cleaned a similar number of times. "The experience a product like this would suffer in a washing machine and then in the heat of a dryer would be quite traumatic, and creating a suit that could handle it and still look as good — or better — as if it were dry-cleaned took quite a bit of doing." This suit is the product of a fashion market in transition as it continues to divide between the ultra-pricey (& getting pricier) designer end of the market, and the affordable mass market - eliminating anything in the middle. While A-list designers such as Isaac Mizrahi for Target, Stella McCartney for Adidas, and Karl Lagerfeld for H&M have created a heightened awareness of high design at low prices, the trend has a much wider reach. The Limited’s L3 Travel suit combined a staggering amount of fabric technology and high-end design styling into a suit that’s not only inexpensive to purchase, but is extremely affordable to maintain.

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