How to be a sensible sale shopper

Lauren Bravo writes:
I tried to go sales shopping yesterday. It didn’t go very well. Because what I’d forgotten, indeed what I forget every year, is that sales shopping doesn’t agree with me (not does dairy, but that hasn’t stopped me from polishing off a whole wedge of stilton). Sales turn me into a crazed, handbag-swinging monster, blinded by sequins and prone to hallucinations in which I am a size six and look alluring in metallic jumper dresses. Every sale-shopping expedition I’ve been on in the last few years has featured me elbowing a pensioner, crying in a changing room, buying a sensible pair of pyjama bottoms and vowing never to do it again. But sadly, like the stilton, it’s a resolution easily made and easily crumbled.

With up to 12 million bargain-hunters hitting the shops this Boxing Day, a 20 per cent rise on 2008 sales, it seems I’m not the only one who is easily seduced by the big red signs. It only takes a whisper of the magic R-word, recession, to have us stocking up on cut-price goodies like they’re going out of fashion (which of course, they are).

But despite the figures, Boxing Day reductions don’t pack quite the punch they once did, because we are now living in the era of the perpetual sale. It’s a rare shop on the high street that doesn’t have a sad little clutch of half-price pants and linen blouses in a corner somewhere, all of the time. Nowadays I walk into shops expecting a sale and get genuinely narked if I don’t find one. We have January sales, spring sales, pre-summer sales, summer sales, back to school sales, pre-Christmas sales and pre-sale sales. My friend Liz derides the buying of any non-sale item as being “against her religion”.

I’ve come to believe that the sale/non-sale debate is not about how much money you have, but rather your attitude to spending it. The old dilemma: would you rather have one really, really nice thing for lots of money, or loads of tacky or faddy or frilly or falling apart or doesn’t-quite-fit things for the same amount? Common sense and fashion editors would have us believe it’s the former – to forgo the sales and instead spend all you can on one standout piece, like a fantastic leather jacket or the perfect pair of jeans, is a smart move. You’re making an investment you will never regret. But how many times have we bought the super-luxe coat and left it in the wardrobe to stroke fondly once a week, while we carry on wearing the tatty jacket that cost us £15 in an H&M sale many moons ago?

There are two main approaches to sale shopping. There’s the sensible one (or ‘the Mum Method’), in which you keep an eye on everything you like in the weeks leading up to Christmas, don’t buy any of them, then pray that you’ll magically find them half price in the sale. This approach saves you money, but there are some considerable downsides: 1) it is boring. 2) You probably won’t find them half price in the sale, or at least not in your size, and 3) while you’re waiting for them to be reduced, you will miss at least four social occasions when you would have worn them; as soon as you do buy them, you will suddenly never have cause to wear them ever again.

Then there’s the non-sensible approach. You know how that one goes – like a nightmare sequence in a Disney film, all the items you’ve never even considered before all suddenly leap off the racks and start twirling around, cooing “buy me… buy meeee”. They’re all wildly impractical, don’t go together, don’t go with anything else you own, and make you look vaguely like a drag version of an X-factor contestant. But more importantly, they are all £7.

If possible it is probably best to combine the two approaches, like a sensible mum with a penchant for the odd sequinned puffball. Or just stick to the following advice: if you wouldn’t have looked twice at it before Christmas, don’t pick it up now just because it’s cheap. There is a reason nobody bought any of those spangled jumper dresses, and that reason will become oh-so-apparent once you put it on in the safety of your own bedroom. Take plenty of water and protein-rich snacks, and know when to have a little sit down. And if the whole experience gets too much, you can’t go wrong with a nice pair of pyjama bottoms. Good luck.