​People Are Calling £425 Balenciaga Trainers ‘Overpriced’ Lonsdale Slip-Ons

High fashion rarely comes cheap - in fact, usually you'd have to flog off several internal organs in order to actually afford something from a designer label.

But maybe you don't have to go for the real deal; maybe what you wanted was staring at you all along... in the aisles of Sports Direct.

Shoppers have noticed the unlikely yet uncanny resemblance between Balenciaga's new Zen trainers and a pair of Lonsdale shoes.

Balenciaga

Made from 100 percent polyurethane and made in China, the Balenciaga sneaks bear such features as a 'round toe' and 'black ground laces'.

These are yours for a cool £425 ($550), but some people reckon you can get the same effect with a pair of Lonsdales - which you can usually pick up for around £20.

Sports Direct

These slip-on Lonsdale Benn Mens Trainers boasts a 'durable grip' and a 'padded ankle', with a leather upper sole (swanky!). More importantly, they only cost £24.99 ($32.63).

Someone joked: "When you have to put in work at Power League at 3, tarmac some drive ways at 5, then hit a Shoreditch fashion show at."

Another wrote: "I see Balenciaga are continuing with their strategy of 'taking weird & iconic British culture and selling it for hundreds of £'. We've had the clunky hi-tech trainers, the Ikea bag and now we've got the Sports Direct Lonsdale £6.99 classic."

Yup, it's not the first time the designer brand has done something like this: check out these red, square-toe leather mules that look bizarrely like the cartons McDonald's uses for its French fries.

Barneys

Screenshots of the shoes listed on the Barneys New York website, shared on social media, revealed they were selling for $545 (£417).

McDonald's Sweden then joined in with the joke for Stockholm Fashion Week, sharing a photo of its version of the shoes, with a caption that read: "Om vi får 103042 likes släpper vi dessa påriktigt."

If Swedish isn't your strong point, that roughly translates as: "If we get 103042 likes we release these for real."

The moral of the story? If you've got your eye on some designer clobber, you might as well check out your local McDonald's or Sports Direct first - you may just save yourself a few hundred quid.

Topics: World News, News, Fashion

Jess Hardiman

Jess is a journalist at LADbible who graduated from Manchester University with a degree in Film Studies, English Language and Linguistics - indecisiveness at its finest, right there. She also works for FOODbible and its sister page Seitanists, which are both a safe haven for her to channel a love for homemade pasta, fennel and everything else in between. You can contact Jess at [email protected].

@Jess_Hardiman