Online Dressing

 I'll try to be positive here but it's difficult. I can think of one particular North American outlet that boasts sales that aren't really sales. If you have to buy two of an item to get a discount, that's no sale. Another well known shoe company with comfort sneakers, simply raises their prices on line to accommodate the discount that ends up the same net price as the regular ones. To me, a sale is something that is the regular item in the regular size, discounted. Sales tactics are used by some unscrupulous sellers. One soon learns who to avoid. Their "tactics", just as in wartime tactics, are tactics meant to tempt you to buy more than you planned by making you think you are getting two for the price of one. Uh uh. Don't do it unless actually, you want two of an item. This particular store also boasts sales but when you go online to purchase, the sales items are in remainder sizes not the average. Very few women wear an ultra tiny size in anything, although I have had the misfortune of hearing some women in change rooms next to me, loudly asking for sizes far smaller than the average.  I always assume by the volume, they've aced some kind of diet and are out celebrating. At any rate, as we mature, women frequently change sizes up rather than down and that's natural and okay. No one wants to live in a gym or diet all the time. It means finding the right fit and forgetting about the numbers. Cut off the sizes if you must but let the garment fit. When I think of someone who got it all wrong, I recall a certain very attractive mother of four or five who had gained pounds.  Her mistake was buying garments that were her dream size and not the actual one. I prayed that she would find a wise dress clerk and get a size that hung well and was in a design that flattered her true beauty. She looked stuffed. We are told over and over again that the fashion magazines no longer use models who are having eating disorders. Not so. While there may be a token few larger models, the pathetic, skinny ones who are evidently starving themselves, abound. When I see skeletal young women with wan faces striding down a ramp like gangly ponies, I don't see the dress, I see an self-abused woman. Jutting ribs and hollow legs spoil the effect of the most finely engineered garment. Most of the fashion ramp clothing is not what humans would wear at any rate.  Perhaps so on Fifth Avenue or Rodeo Drive where the you-know-who film people are photographed sashaying along with their dangling three thousand dollar handbags and an Afghan or a French Poodle in hand. I guess the bottom line is find a sale that is a sale and not one where the merchant has hiked the tag as a sale when it's not.  When you find a store that does reduce its regular items regularly, it's a keeper. And you'll trust it and return. Shopping online has hazards and one pitfall you don't want to step into is the offshore ads with styles that look very attractive but when the item arrives, it is not in human fit or fabrics that are wearable and washable. One learns. The last time I erred in that direction I thought I would outsmart myself and order an XL to avoid  getting an "average" size that a Barbie Doll would reject. But the garment that came called XL, truly was more like a tent for a family of four. That's when I gave up taking a chance on some glitzy online company and decided from that moment on, to stick to the tried and true.