“Cuff it, work it, tie it, glam it, roll it, crop it,” read the ads in the Gap’s current “How Do You Wear It?” campaign starring Sarah Jessica Parker. The company’s print ads resemble a mix-and-match book, complete with overlapping pages that allow you to dress Ms. Parker in different style combinations.

Playing around – and out loud – with clothing is no longer an activity for the aesthete, the socialite, or the celebrity. Combining and recombining clothing of differing styles – your mother’s old Pucci blouse with off-the-rack Express pants, a DKNY blazer with jeans found at Good Will, Target with Prada – is quite common these days. The options for dressing and designing have broadened for everyone. Even this month’s Vogue (the largest ever at 832 pages) has a section featuring 20 fashionable working women selecting picks off the fall runway and recombining them into outfits of their choosing: Kristen Eikenberry, a, photo studio president, is praised for her weekend coupling of a hunter-green Marni shrug, Ralph Lauren boots, and her Abercrombie & Fitch safari shorts. Malia Jones, a 27-year-old surfer, mixes a white Rick Owens jacket with vintage shorts.

To make this mixing easier, Vogue has launched a click-and-shop Web site (www.shopseptembervogue.com)where you can browse and instantly shop for items featured in the advertisements of the print edition of the magazine. These days fashionable people of all social backgrounds are encouraged to customize their look by mixing high with low.

In “The Substance of Style,” published in paperback this month, business writer Virginia Postrel argues that the once rigid aesthetic hierarchy has broken down. “Individuals do not simply imitate their social betters or seek to differentiate themselves from those below them. Personal taste, not an elite imprimatur, is what matters,” she writes. “Consumers are willing to mix not only styles but sources … for personal expression, personal imagination, personal initiative – form follows instinct.”

The vast and seemingly endless results – in stores and catalogs, on the street, on screen, online – can be time consuming, if not down right paralyzing, to sift through. This is where working women, especially, appreciate a guide.

It is into this vast aesthetic and business landscape that magazines such as Lucky and Shop, Etc., often dubbed “magalogs” (a marriage of magazine and catalog), enter, to help consumers navigate the overwhelming options in the marketplace. “The editor of shopping magazines, or magalogs, like Lucky, and its competitor Shop, Etc., helps us sort through today’s abundance of goods to find the ones that suit our tastes and identities. The editor expects us to define our own style, not to copy hers,” Ms. Postrel said in a recent phone interview.

Consider Lucky’s massive September shoe guide, featuring round-toe pumps, knee-high boots, Mary Janes, pointy flats, ankle boots, equestrian boots and tassel pumps. Lucky also offers helpful dressing hints (in a recent issue, the tricky combining of skirt length and shoe style) and ways of mixing up clothes from the runway with those seen on the street. “Traditional fashion magazines tell us what to buy and what to value,” Ms. Postrel said. “But the new crop of magazines, like Shop, Etc., are not about keeping up with the Joneses – or with Aerin Lauder or Paris Hilton. Instead of enforcing status, they celebrate pleasure.”

Lucky, which launched in December 2000 and will reach a circulation of 1 million by January, has spawned many similar titles, such as the male-counterpart, Cargo and the soon-to-be launched Domino, a magazine about home fashions, and is viewed by many in the industry as the next mass publishing trend.

“Women today are much more sophisticated about their style,” said Lucky founding editor Kim France in a recent interview. “The Gap and Pottery Barn and Target all helped with the democratization of style. Something can be stylish and inexpensive! If the Payless shoe is great, we’ll show it! If we think only Manolo Blahnik will do, we’ll show it! The fashion magazines did not address this.”

Even the fashion bibles seem to be going in that direction, however. Anna Wintour wrote in her September Vogue editor’s letter, “If there were one rule that must be followed, it would be to ignore all directives and regulations and to devise a style that suits your life and your budget.”

The advertisements, too, are in sync with the editor’s message. The fall campaign for Saks features two women wearing an identical designer item – a leopard-print coat from Celine – in different ways. On a Downtown-looking model the coat is worn buttoned and belted with cropped black pants – “Saks loves Bai in Celine.” The same coat is worn open, over a formal black lace gown, by a more Uptown blonde – “Saks loves Marley in Celine.” Good style, what looks to be most “correct” these days, comes from the ability to combine, to clash, to layer, to mix high with low, and to recycle with ease.

“In the 1960s and ’70s there was one dominant look,” said Mandi Norwood, founding editor of Shop, Etc., which launched a month ago. “What is going to define the look of the turn of the 21st century?” At Shop, she explains, the editors sift through vast offerings in fashion, home, and beauty, not unlike a department store, and showcase what they think is worth buying, both the practical and the more splurge-worthy, fantastical items. “We try to save people time and money,” she said. “The other day we looked at a gorgeous D &G snakeskin diamante belt – we all piped up but we asked ourselves, would we really buy it with our hard-earned money? No. So it didn’t make it into Shop, Etc.”

Of course it’s not just consumers who are mixing things up. Isaac Mizrahi and Karl Lagerfeld are doing collections for mass retail stores Target and H&M, respectively. H &M will also be publishing a magazine, due to hit shops this month, featuring its mass-produced clothing paired with designer duds.

All of this began with the acceptance of vintage clothing in celebrity culture (it was always popular with the arty crowd inspired by both novelty and budget). And then a few ensembles mixing designer and vintage clothes on Carrie Bradshaw begot similar looks around the country. InStyle magazine showed us how to copy celebrity-styled looks on real-life budgets.

The Internet, too, has contributed to the trend. Browsing, once exclusive to those with leisure time, knowledge, and an adventurous spirit, became inescapable and hassle-free. The options didn’t need to be tumbled upon by accident or whispered by word of mouth – or left to the personal shopper.

I asked Ms. Postrel what she thought of the current fashion landscape. “I am drawn to fashion and design and new ways of mixing things up,” she said. “I enjoy Lucky magazine because it makes things easy.”