Wondering how you're going to afford your next piece of designer clothing? Good news, you might not have to donate plasma after all. Taking a cue from last year's brutal (for retailers) holiday season, designers like Lacoste, Coach and a host of others will be dropping their price points significantly. The idea is to avoid another winter of retailers marking their wares down 70% -- which is not so good for a designer's ego.

Basically, if you're a brand that's positioned somewhere in between high end luxury and upper-middle class chic, you can't afford to let people realize that they can just wait until your stuff goes on sale and snatch it up at a discount. Markdowns can do serious damage to a label's perceived strength and brand image. According to HSBC luxury analyst Rambourg:

"Luxury is all about perceived value ... If you lower prices you take away that 'wow' effect, which is what defines luxury."

As you might expect -- considering failed insurance companies are still paying out hundreds of millions of dollars in executive bonuses -- true luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, Hermes, and Burberry won't be dropping their prices.