No matter your financial means, you can enjoy the benefits of high fashion for free.  Note: we aren’t talking a (highly-encouraged) weekly trip to Barneys or Bergdorf’s to fondle their latest.

Fortunately, for the style-seeking set, the Internet has proven an ideal place to find innovative design, beautiful things, and more insider info than any Wintour wiretap would get you.  Below - a list of our favorite places to indulge couture cravings without spending a dime:

Hedislimane.com/diary
Designer (of Dior Homme for the last five years) and photographer Hedi Slimane’s name has become synonymous in both the fashion and art worlds with skinny silhouettes, predominantly monochrome palette, and a fetish for dirty, skinny (and occasionally androgynous) rocker boys.  And, for the last 305 days, Slimane has been offering up a photo archive of his aesthetic trappings, adding images to it regularly.  It's full of political charge (American flags a-plenty), stunning portraiture (featuring rockers like Klaxons, and celebs such as Gus Van Sant and Courtney Love), and enchanting still-lifes -- don’t miss the disco balls.  Warning: This is extremely addictive.

Fashionista.com
This recently-launched site from Gawker co-founder Elizabeth Spiers’ Dead Horse Media Group is at the head of the online fashion pack.  It features frequent updates and loads of insider information (often even in stride with WWD.com’s latest Breaking News updates); it will guarantee that you’re in-the-know on everything from couture and capsule collections to  fashion-forward cosmetics.  To boot, the blog maintains a consistently positive outlook – ditching stereotypical fashionista cattiness for a more community-oriented approach to everything fashionable.

HenrikVibskov.com
The website of Denmark-based designer and artist Henrik Vibskov offers a seemingly endless array of visual stimulation.  The homepage opens to a slideshow featuring dozens of photographs documenting Vibskov’s own collection previews and art installations, as well as unrelated images.  In addition to keeping your eyes satiated, a virtual walk-through invites you to use your mind to ruminate on the perpetually controversial topic of where art and fashion meet.

Gofugyourself.typepad.com
So much for the year of nice… while this fug-finding (and figuratively flagellating) site isn’t as mean as its celebrity-gossip-blog counterparts (Michael K and Perez included), it’s not a place to go looking for Do’s.  It is, however, a site that offers cheap thrills (i.e. A to D-list celebrities in clothes so heinous, they should be burned Mary Weiland-style). 

Fashionoffice.org
This one’s an eye-candy-packed handbook for slews of fabulous and fashionable products.  From a ‘who's who’ guide (of high-fashion) to "Catwalk TV" to BMW bikes for kids, this guide is guaranteed to keep you salivating.  Warning: could be hazardous to bank account if you follow fashionoffice time with this.

MartinMargiela.com
The famed Belgian-based designer has recently updated his namesake brand’s website, and it’s not to be missed.  Don’t let the intimidating "Warning! Box" laden homepage fool you: This site is not under construction.  The newly re-envisioned website showcases an aesthetic that’s as clean, intelligently-detailed, and modern as Margiela's clothes (not to mention intentionally reminiscent of a cyber-model circa 1982). And with it, the ingénue (and, in our opinion, all-around instigator of good taste), proves that he’s as innovative as ever.  Note: explore often -- the intermittent pop-ups are priceless.

 ~Alisa Gould-Simon