STYLE | Bargain hunting can be pretty overwhelming, but looking chic on the cheap is doable.

Stores like Winners and Value Village may yield some of the most unique items at the best prices, but they’re also huge, and tend to be stuffed to the brim with – let’s face it – a whole bunch of crap.

And all that crap is hard to navigate.

I’m here to help.

We know you’re whores for the stores that make things easy for you, even when you have to pay full price, but ignoring your local bargain chains is a major style mistake – like wearing head to toe Gap, or socks with sandals.

Value shopping isn’t quite retail therapy, but it doesn’t need to be exhausting and fruitless.

It can be pretty satisfying if you know how to do it right.

Bargain hunters aren’t called hunters for nothing, you know.  Here how to hunt with the best of them:

Make a Plan of Attack

A clear objective is essential to bargain hunting success. Name your venture something like Operation Black Pants. Identifying your prey makes it easier to seek.

Eat Your Wheaties

You can’t just wander into a massive discount store on an empty stomach and expect to make any headway. You need energy and endurance to stage a full frontal shopping attack. Load up on carbs the night before. And pee before you leave.

Establish Your Territory

If carts are available, grab one. Having a cart frees up your hands, helps you claim your space in the aisles and keeps annoying shadow shoppers from crowding you. No carts available? A basket or two ready elbows will do in a pinch.

Execute

This isn’t browsing. If you’re executing Operation Black Pants, you best be makin’ a beeline toward the pants isle straight away. Only once your objective is met (or fully exhausted and abandoned) should you allow yourself to drift over to the fuzzy slippers section.

Go Deep

Don’t be distracted by the shiny New Arrivals section. You’re a bargain hunter, not a full-price pansy! Start in Clearance. Often slightly grubby and near the back, Clearance is the land that clerks forgot. It may be shady, but no one said this was going to be glamorous.

Look at Everything

The task may seem impossibly large, but you need to look at each individual item on a rack order to see what’s really available at a discount store. Flip though each item as if you were turning the pages of a book. You’ll see each piece and feel them too. With a little practice, you’ll be able to do this at warp speed.

Listen to Your Instincts

Don’t waste time deliberating in the aisles. When something jumps out at you give yourself no more than ten seconds to decide if it’s worth trying on. If it is, grab it and keep moving. You’ve got a lot of ground to cover.

Gather, Too

Stock up on maybes and hoard them like a skinny little chipmunk in November. You should only relinquish your hold on a possible item once you’re sure you don’t want to buy it. You may not find another.

Regroup

After you’ve amassed a significant number of items, mark your place in the racks and detour to the fitting area. Discard items that don’t work, and decide on what does.

Buy

If you know you want something, and it’s a decent price, get it. Bargain hunting isn’t about taking the time to think things over. If you do, the item you’re interested in will inevitably be nabbed by some sticky fingered beeotch who was brave enough to make a quick decision.

Bargain hunting is all about finding good stuff at great prices, but it’s not for the faint of heart.

That said, while it may not be as easy as a laid back trip to the mall, the results can be way more satisfying. After all, getting pants you love is great, but having enough left over for shoes is so much better.

And beating out the beeotches is the best of all.

A version of “Looking chic on the cheap” published in Dose magazine’s print edition #002, April 5, 2005 and is shown below. Jump down below the clip for a note from 2018. 

Published in Dose, April 5, 2005.

2018: One of my first assignments at Dose was to produce 50 ideas or pitches (in less than 24 hours) with paragraph-length descriptions for each.

Considering this, I should have immediately twigged to the fact that this new so-called “magazine” was going to lean more toward sweat-shop than legitimate journalistic venture, but I was just 24, and as previously mentioned, a bit of a little idiot. So I just did the 50 pitches. It wasn’t easy, and in order to produce as many as I had to in the time frame given, I resorted to a bit of recycling and pitched a piece about vintage shopping, not unlike the very first piece I’d ever written for a real publication (in 2000, shown here). The piece was accepted, I rewrote it for Dose‘s audience, and it published in the centre spread during Dose‘s very first week in print. (Early print distribution at Dose wasn’t bad. I believe it was printed and distributed in five Canadian cities including Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary and maybe Ottawa, though I can’t recall the last city, and the print run was something like 300K per day.) Reproduced here is the text as I submitted it, and the image file is a clip of the piece as published.

Oh, and yes, I apparently thought it was a good idea to use the word “beeotches” multiple times. And to write the phrase “whores for the stores”.  I promise you that looking back on this makes me wish I was dead. I’m sorry. I disgust myself.