As Heidi Klum teams up with Lidl, have we reached peak fashion collaboration?

The supermodel and the supermarket;Heidi Klum has this morning announced her next business venture,a fashion line produced with German discount groceries chain Lidl, due out later this year.

???Lidl is known for making quality products at affordable prices and I???m proud to partner with them on this fashion collaboration,???Klum says of the hook-up.???I had so much fun designing the pieces in this collection and can???t wait for you to see it.I hope you love it as much as I do!"

I???d like to pretend that we didn"t see this left-of-field fashion collaboration coming.Yet up and down the high street, it???s impossible to step into a store these days without one cardboard celebrity face or another beaming back at you from a rail of dresses.

In the last year, we???ve had Victoria Beckham for Target, Jourdan Dunn for MissGuided, Rihanna and Manolo Blahnik, Alexa Chung for almost everyone (and herself), and the hundredth installment of Rosie Huntington-Whiteley for Marks and Spencer.

Sometimes, collaborations most definitely work.Huntington-Whiteley???s M&S range is constantly growing to keep up with the demand and she is said to be genuinely involved in the design process, allowing customers to buy into her personal taste and creativity.

But as the market becomes more and more saturated, don???t all of these ???special collections??? start to feel less, well, special?

Celebrities aren???t the only ones who are at it, and designer labels have long been collaborating with their high street counterpartsto bring tasters of their luxury world to fashion-hungry customers, at price points they can actually afford.

Since their first team-up with Karl Lagerfeld in 2004, H&M???s capsules have flown out of stores (they are manufactured in limited edition quantities), with fans queuing days in advance to get their hands on cheaper pieces from their favourite designer names or taking to eBay to pay highly inflated prices once designs have run out in stores or online.

???Designer collaborations strengthen our brand as a fashion brand,??? a H&M spokesperson told The Telegraph last year.???[They] clarify our business concept of fashion and quality at the best price in a sustainable way, and clearly show that design is not a matter of price.???

Sometimes, though, the partnerships just feel a little odd.Klum and Lidl are both fabulous German exports in their own right, but does that mean they will make for a good match?

Was the designer fridge that Dolce and Gabbana designed in collaboration with Smeg, an inspired concept or a tad unnecessary?And who remembers the deal Giles Deacon (creatorof Pippa Middleton???s couture wedding dress) signed with Muller Yoghurts in 2013, which allowed the brand to declare its strawberry flavour to be ???this season???s hottest accessory????It all starts to sound a bit outrageous.

Lidl promises in its press release that ???Heidi Klum has carefully designed a high-end, yet affordable fashion collection??? which will be promoted during in-store ???Lidl Fashion Weeks??? across Europe.The low price supermarket chain is clearly trying to merge their world with hers- andmaximise the potential of what will have no doubt been a pricey deal.

The proof of how compatible they really are, though,will be in the product.Would Klum ever truly wear the pieces she"s making for Lidl, perhaps even while shoppingat her own local supermarket?And will Lidl"s customers- who lap up their cut price luxury food and home offerings- want to get an affordable slice of Klum"s high-glamour look?That"ll bethe litmus test for me.

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