Imagine being hooked on brand names and paying $150 for a pair of jeans, and at the same time, becoming bent on impressing others by only wearing an outfit once. Picture college men wearing $300 Gucci belts while college women carry $500 Louis Vuitton bags. This is the life of several thousand college students across America.

After splurging at the mall, a 19-year-old SMU student spent $950 – most of it on outfits for upcoming parties. Another party loomed the following weekend, and even though she had recently received a speeding ticket that she needed to pay $250 for, her thoughts only consisted of more shopping for more parties and outfits to wear to school. It didn’t occur to her to look in her closet for something old, because obviously, someone might recognize the outfit from a previous party.

“Shopping is like therapy. You can go shopping when you’re mad, sad or happy, and either way you’ll feel better when you leave than when you came. Whenever I’m stressed out I can go to the mall and spend around $500 and feel a lot better,” said one student, who asked to remain nameless when responding to questioning about her weekly spending.

While several students struggle to make ends meet, the stereotypical college experience of eating Ramen Noodles, wearing sweat pants and drinking cheap beer is quickly disappearing.

The money that is spent by students on fashion is quickly rising. Researchers from Short Woman: Market, Business, and Economy, a group that comments weekly on the economy, suggests that college students are not only spending money on other fashion savvy clothing but also on fast food and the latest electronics. Sources from the St. Petersburg Times in Tampa have stated that students today are not only more sophisticated, but they are harder working and wealthier than ever before. After polling 75 SMU students at random in the Hughes-Trigg Student Center, three out of four have their own car, while another 80 percent hold a part-time job.

While America’s 16.5 million college students have 24 percent more disposable income today than just a year ago, they are still spending a lot more than they have, according to a survey done by Alloy Media and Marketing, a New York City youth marketing company.

“Young adult college students we’ve recently interviewed are in deep, deep credit card debt because of everything from designer jean purchases to gas prices to $150 cocktail tabs to mortgages,” Irma Zandl, whose New York company, Zandl Group, studies trends in the youth market for companies such as Walt Disney and General Motors, said.

The typical college student gets an average of $757 a month from a paid job, parents or other sources, according to an Alloy survey.

Students spend most of their extra money on food, but a large portion goes to cell phone service, which 85 percent of students have, entertainment and clothing. Nationally, students spend more than $5 billion a year on clothes and shoes. Although there are several shoppers who are smart and attempt to find their favorite styles on sale somewhere along the line, many of these younger consumers have begun to shop like celebrities with unlimited cash. Some experts have posed the idea that it may be because students have more access to the wardrobes and styles of celebrities than ever before, and some of these items are within reach. According to student Liz Wishnatzki, this is the typical feel and consensus of SMU students.

“After watching so much MTV it is easy to want to wear what the celebs are wearing. Since I have a job, plus my parents give me money, I can go out and buy designer jeans just like any actor or singer on TV,” she said.

Samantha Skey, senior vice president for strategic marketing at Alloy, sees this trend among many American college students.

“Luxury, in general, is very, very visible from TV programming to Web lifestyles,” Skey said. “There are five different reality programs about rich kids, and once a peer group is exposed to that kind of wealth, they may try to emulate it.”

At the same time, many college students are buying what clothing experts are now calling “disposable clothing.” These are inexpensive clothes that will only be worn once or twice to pair with their premium jeans, shoes and handbags. Maureen MacGillivray, 49, a professor of apparel merchandising and design at Central Michigan University, said that this has become evident amongst her students.

“They will buy designer jeans for $150, and then pick up cheaper ‘”disposable”‘ tops from stores such as Forever 21 and Target, clothes that won’t withstand multiple washings,” she said.

This is a growing phenomenon that is spreading across college campuses. The overall clothing appearance remains high quality, due to the designer necessities such as jeans and purses; however, the quantity is there to keep students from repeating outfits.

After spending a few hours at North Park Mall, one SMU student revealed the secret dream of the female college shopper.

“If there was a major in shopping, that would be me,” the 19-year-old SMU sophomore said as she looked at shoes in Nine West. She carried a $450 Louis Vuitton tote bag, which was a gift from her mother, and wore 7 for All Mankind jeans and a white Lacoste polo. She made her first purchase at Forever 21 and spent just $20 on a black lace going-out shirt and $9 on new fashionable long gold chains. She later headed over to Nordstrom and spent exactly $156 on the newest pair of 7 for All Mankind jeans. She already had four other pairs of the brand in her closet, but she said this one is a different wash and shade.

Working as a tutor while living in an SMU apartment, she doesn’t pay rent because her mom pays for her housing; with no bills in mind, she is able to spend freely on fashionable pieces. While looking around the campus, she daily sees other students’ designer jeans by 7 for All Mankind (price range: $132 to $395 a pair), as well as designer sweat suits by Juicy Couture ($158 on the low end). She, along with an overwhelming population of the student body, feels compelled to own these pricey fashion staples, as well.

Girls on campus are dressing more nicely to attend class. Between viewing the Escada and Jimmy Choo shoes, it may become harder for a girl to meet the fashion standards at SMU.

One of the professors in the CCPA department and a parent of an SMU freshman student, Nina Flournoy, said, “As an SMU professor, I definitely see a lot of fashion-conscious students, with some pricey designer labels. As a former editor for Women’s Wear Daily, I can appreciate the interest in fashion. Butàas a mother of a fashion-orientedàSMU student, I know the prices can get ridiculous. It can also make students who don’t focus on fashion feel self conscious. That’s probably the biggest downside.”

The idea of big spending is not just limited to girls, however.

Ryan Stevens, 20, was out at Northpark Mall, as well, hitting some of the same stores as the women, buying expensive jeans, watches, sandals and belts. Stevens, a sophomore at SMU, had no problem gravitating right to the $198 jeans for men in Nordstrom. He had a $300 pair of Burberry sunglasses hooked into his orange Ralph Lauren polo. He wore Rainbow flip-flops and blue Ralph Lauren shorts, held up by a Louis Vuitton belt, to match the blue horse on the polo.

He said he has eight other pairs of equally expensive jeans in his closet that consist of 7 for All Mankind and True Religion. “My mom and sister are all about this stuff, and so I got sucked into it. Personally, I only spend about $3,000 a month on clothing … that doesn’t include eating out and my new iPod,” Stevens said.

He works and doesn’t pay his own rent either, because his parents pay for both his schooling and his loft in Mockingbird Station. When asked where he gets the money to make these expensive purchases, he said, “I don’t know, my job doesn’t really pay that much, but with money I get from my parents I don’t worry about it, and it just kind of all works out.”

No matter the monetary situation, college students are finding ways to keep up fashionably. Due to the pattern that students have set, credit card companies bombard this young generation in anticipation of having them max out a card from their respective companies.

“Credit-card issuers pay institutions for sponsorship of school programs, for support of student activities, for rental of on-campus solicitation tables and for exclusive marketing agreements, such as college affinity credit cards. Even banks giving away everything from T-shirts to sets of steak knives to students who fill out credit-card applications. On the wisp of a promise of future earnings, college students can get their own cards without parents finding out, sometimes with tragic consequences.” the Idaho Central Credit Union said.

Sources from Entreprenuer.Com said that college students are now demanding luxury, and they are not seeing the problem with their spending. They have become so comfortable with these high prices that the items are now commonplace things seen at campuses around America.