January
Crack open that thick wad of fifties, flex those credit cards, and prepare to regret overspending for the next three months. Yes, it's sale time. If the year has been a bad one for the high street (listen to those business reports on the radio during the previous autumn), many stores, especially department stores, will have marked down much of their stock in December, in advance of the first day of the sales. With more people shopping online and even postponing the Christmas shopping precisely to wait for the sales, bargains are increasingly there to be had.
Watch out though - not all stores will have the previous autumn/winter's fashion items on sale: some will even stockpile those items from previous seasons' sales that failed to sell last time around. For some shoppers that's an opportunity to pick up the much wanted piece that had missed first time around. For others, it can make a disappointing sale. Note, also, that different stores run their sales in different ways and at different times. Some make a single mark-down. Others will mark down progressively throughout their sale period, leaving you gambling on whether to pay now or hold on for a better price and risk losing out altogether.
Just as important as when the sales start (refer to your local paper for details) are the less publicised dates of when they finish. Some stores play this by ear: if they calculate that their floor space would get a better return by cutting their losses and getting the new season's merchandise out, a sale can end suddenly overnight. Beware bargain hunters!
And get excited, fashion hunters! Of course, after the sales come the new collections. Mid- to late-January is when most stores will be unveiling these (though if you are after a specific item in short supply you should phone around to find out just which stockists will be putting out their deliveries first). This is the time of year to sign on to store databases in order to be notified of future key dates and deliveries.
January also sees the designers take to the catwalks. Milan holds the menswear shows around the middle of the month, showing the collections that will be in the shops the following autumn/winter. From around the 20th of the month, Paris stops for the haute-couture shows (that's the really expensive stuff), followed by its own menswear shows.
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