Smart Fashion Stocks Change Their Stripes

This column was originally published on RealMoney on May 31 at 12:02 p.m. EDT. It's being republished as a bonus for TheStreet.com readers. For more information about subscribing to RealMoney, please click here.

Is the intellectual property of apparel, the brand of apparel, beginning to win out over the stores that sell it?

That's what I am pondering as I watch Ralph Lauren(RL Quote) and VF Corp.(VFC Quote) go up endlessly, even as the stores that sell the products go sideways or down.

In a Wall Street Confidential video this morning with the always excellent George Moriarty, I found myself making the analogy to when the balance of power between the PC makers and the insides of the PCs -- Microsoft(MSFT Quote) and Intel(INTC Quote) -- shifted in the 1990s. The brand and the gross margins had been going to the assemblers, the Dells(DELL Quote), the Gateways(GTW Quote), and it shifted to the insides because the key intellectual property was based on those two suppliers. ...