Sales Shopping – The Low-down!
It’s that time if the year again – in fact it’s actually a month earlier than it used to be but you don’t hear me complaining! The Sales have started and you will see a treacle of reductions in the coming weeks as more and more shops start to follow suit! So faced with rails of choices and shopping centres full of potential mistakes how can we reduce the waste and increase the taste? How do we know when a bargain is really a bargain?
The first and most important rule (which in my opinion should be in the shopping rule book for women – (yes ladies I think there should be rule book) is that a bargain is only a bargain if you actually wear it! Sounds ridiculously like common sense yet open the doors of our over crammed wardrobes and you will quickly find out what I mean. The floral cardi that would go with the perfect pencil skirt you don’t yet have, the sky high stilettos that Kate Moss rocked down the red carpet have yet to be rocked outside your front door due to your fear of heights or remember those black leggings? The two pairs you bought to go with your new stylish casual winter ensembles only to pile them into an already overcrowded mixed up jumble of mistakes. Am I being harsh? Perhaps. But at least this way we have some semblance of the predicament our wardrobe may find itself in if we let ourselves lose before reading some top Style Fish Sales Tips!
When you’re braving the shops think about it logically. What were you looking for before the sales? What did you try on in November, love and didn’t buy because it was too expensive. This is always a good starting point. Its one of the biggest mistakes all women make! If it’s reduced by a huge amount we somehow feel an overwhelming allegiance to the Item purely based on the fact we have found it amongst the mounds of clothes and hordes of shoppers. It’s almost as if it is our job to love it. Well, if you liked it in November and you still like it now – it will be a good purchase.
If you do find something you truly love only to find it’s not left in your size, don’t fret. It wasn’t meant to be. In fashion just like in life – something’s are better left to chance! Unless it is easy to alter and you know you won’t just leave it hanging in your wardrobe, leave it back. In my experience anything we buy with the intention of altering, never sees the light of day again and if we do bring it to the tailor more often than not, the rejigged version is never like it was on the mannequin – so think twice. If it doesn’t fit, move on and find something that does! It’s like trying to change a man – it just can’t be done and usually isn’t worth the effort.
Really start to think about the reasons we buy our clothes. We buy them because we love them! They make us feel good and allow us to tell a little part of ourselves to the world – they allow us to express ourselves and we think and expect each and every item we buy to fulfil its duty no matter how much it cost. And rightly so or why buy it! Why then does this part tend to go flying out the window at the sight of a big red tag with the magic words ‘marked down’ blazoned across it? When we start buying clothes because they are cheap – we need to step away from the counter and start evaluating our wardrobes…closely.
We have all made mistakes, we have all made impulse purchases, it is sometimes part of the fun but when our wardrobes are ruled by a red tags rather than by a real reason, we need to stop! It’s what became much too common place before the dreaded ‘R’ word became came to the fore. So to make the sales really working for you, start looking at your basics – your Jeans, your day dresses, your coats, your good boots etc. Sometimes if we are not happy with this section of our wardrobe, the sales can be a good opportunity to fine tune these more expensive Items. It’s only when we have this right that we can comfortably have fun with the ‘fun’ element of the sales – buying something we wouldn’t normally touch, just because it is marked down!
We all need our wardrobes to start working harder than ever before and to see this happening; we too need to be part of that process to really see the results!
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