To regular shoppers on State Street, Bop is just that great place to get Juicy Couture or Joe’s Jeans. It has the latest fashions a freshman graduate from Milliken High School in Los Angeles might be missing once she washes up on Lake Mendota’s shores.

But like Garbage drummer Butch Vig rolling into Starbucks on a Tuesday morning, Bop’s everyday place for Madison residents is a global phenomenon.

As celebrity magazines like Star and InTouch rapidly shorten the distance between tastemakers on the coasts and trendsetters in Iowa City, IA and Omaha, NE, www.shopbop.com has transformed the retail market by becoming Achilles flying on DSL heels.

Few shopbop.com customers know that when the mailroom clerk brings them a new Marc Jacobs coat along with the Computer Discount Warehouse catalogs, that it didn’t come to the Midwest from across the Hudson River.

“Since magazines like InStyle began, the general public has been getting and expecting up to the minute details on what their favorite stars are wearing,” said Joni Cohen, features editor for New York-based Star Magazine. “Shopping online, at a place like shopbop, has certainly helped make urban and celebrity style accessible to those in the suburbs and beyond.”

The market for premium jeans and complement labels has transformed the fashion landscape. In its latest July earnings report, Jean maker Levi Straus revealed that its premium jeans lines contributed to quadrupling profits in the last quarter. According to the same financials, Dockers’ sales are way down.

Investment house Bear Stearns recently bought stock in Citzen’s of Humanity, a label that in 2004, according a recent article in the New York Times, sold $200 million in $200 jeans.

Shopbop.com’s success is so coveted the company will not do interviews leaking even the slightest hint about its online business model.

The online retailer’s unique position has also allowed it to present unique promotions with clothing labels needing no extra exposure. This fall True Religion, one of the hottest premium jean labels, is offering an exclusive line with embroidered pockets for $100 through shopbop.com and the State Street store. Profits from the jeans will go directly to Y-Me breast cancer foundation.

“Fashion has made statements in T-shirts and jewelry for this great cause,” shopbop.com publicist Alle Fister said. “We thought the jeans were a way to do a little more.”

Having the ability to pull off a fundraiser with a premium jeans label that relies on careful image management demonstrates the cache the Web site has earned.

Staying faithful to its home of five years, all of shopbop.com’s fashion photo shoots are done in Madison.

Wander up to the Capital Square and one recognizes the setting for those girls in Victorian dresses isn’t Balthazar Café in Soho but Madison’s Café Montamare.

Fister, a native of Los Angeles and 2000 graduate of Pepperdine University, honed her publicity skills at Lizzie Grubman, a public relations firm that could teach pit bulls a thing or two about making a reputation. She has worked 15 months at shopbop, in the hot molten core of its meteoric rise.

Fister states that while getting non-stop press doesn’t have her working longer and longer hours, she’s working “a little longer and more focused hours.”

When the Badger Herald first called Star Magazine on a deadline day for an interview with Cohen, a doubtful reply came back from an assistant. A follow-up with Fister that mentioned a call into Cohen changed ‘possibly the end of the day’ into 15 minutes.

According to Cohen, Star’s weekly publication schedule and the availability of celebrity style at shopbop.com have played out a symbiotic relationship in transforming the American retail landscape.

“We run photos of stars shot just days before the magazine hits the newsstands and our fashion reporters find out what they’re wearing, where they got [it], how much it costs immediately,” Cohen said.

Whatever Mary-Kate Olsen or Lindsey Lohan is wearing, if it’s available on Shopbop.com sales jump.

“Star also works hard to bring readers style options that mimic celebrity style,” Cohen said. “That’s the beauty of fashion today; there is a quick turnaround time from when an item hits the runway in Paris to when a lower-priced version will be available. In some cases, within mere weeks.”

Customers are not interested in going to shopbop.com to get the lower-priced version; they want the real thing. For customers in big cities, especially where “the butt is everything” premium jeans are concerned, boutiques staffed with could-have-been models and catty male staff can be intimidating.

“Our customer service people have fitting rooms that they can go into and actually try on clothes for the customer then tell them ‘get a 29 instead of a 28,'” Fister said.

As the race to the $1000 jean and what Lindsey wore to lunch drive the 18 to 35 retail demographic, several major retailers like Gap have moved to create lines targeted at baby-boomers.

Fister states from her knowledge of shopbop.com’s customer base, industry common sense thinking that says older women want to dress older is off.

“We sell a lot of Juicy and lines like Catherine Maldrino to older, sophisticated women,” she said.

Again, Fister credits the personal “I know what it’s like and what you like” customer service/personal shopper combination.

Fashion trends facilitated by shopbop.com have even got economists weighing in. Essentially, their interest comes because there is nothing rational about a consumer paying $333 for a pair of jeans. These new consumer purchase patterns obliterate economist’s biblical “rational choice theory.”

Barry Schwartz of Swarthmore College calls it “satisficing.”

“Satisficing,” according to Schwartz, is consumers realizing that their income will never be maximized so trade-offs are not made for economic ends, but happiness. Schwartz’s work and speaking to this cultural change has motivated financial analysts to look at why consumers are buying less but paying more for clothes.

So when the significant other or parent sees $560 lined to shopbop.com on the Visa statement, simply say, “Don’t you know? I’m ‘satisficing.'”