Bangalore, July 30 - A visitor taken to colleges across this city will be taken in by the trendy wardrobe of students. A closer look, however, reveals that the fashionable dresses and accessories are not expensive 'branded' items. They are picked up from the shops that dot the lanes and by-lanes around the main shopping complexes around the city.

Scores of youngsters in this tech hub feel that's one way to beat the recession and still be trendy, as there has been a dip in their pocket money.

The dresses and accessories are readily available and are funky.

Be it Bangalore's very own flea market, popular Commercial Street, Brigade Road or M.G. Road, shopping streets across the city are filled with shoppers. Right from clothes, chunky jewellery, bags to shoes, buyers are lapping up everything.

'Till a few months back, I was a loyal customer of brands like Lee Cooper, Mango and Fab India, as far as buying clothes was concerned. But, due to the economic slowdown and my father being a businessman, my pocket money was cut. So, these days I am hunting and buying clothes from the streets of Bangalore,' college student Monica Singh told IANS.

'These days I can hardly save money to spend on brands to buy my clothes and accessories. My pocket money has been drastically chopped, as both my parents are employed in the IT industry and they too have endured cuts in their pay packages. Thus, I am settling for affordable clothes from the city's streets,' said Nandita Mohan, another college-goer.

But changing their preferences from shopping in swanky malls to the city's streets does not mean that the young are compromising on their 'style quotient'.