Sunday, September 13, 2009

Online Cruising


I spend an embarrassing amount of time online. Only 10 percent is spent trolling people.com, soaking up tawdy celebrity gossip. The rest, my pretties, is allllll about the shopping. Or, at the very least, screen shopping.
So, it seemed like an extreme selfless act of humanity to share with everyone places I — no exaggeration — visit everyday. Who am I to hog such wonderful sites that make for great time sucking:

Elle magazine's shoe blog. Sometimes the shoes are as high-end as Givenchy; other times they came from Target. But, the photos of Elle staffers' kicks are always a well-shot treat. On at least on occasion, I feel so hard for a pair of Calvin Klein platform sandals that I spent a significant amount of time hunting them down. I found them. Oh yes, I found them and made them mine....Before returning them because they were too darn high.
Revolveclothing.com. This is my top shopping site. Free shipping, free returns (I'm a sucka for the free ship) and a mindblowing number of brands are available on this site. Most of my wardrobe has come from here. Mondays and Wednesdays are the best days to look 'cuz that's when new stuff is posted. Another reason to love Revolve is that it lets you use discount codes on sale items. I have robbed them on more than one occasion because of this nicety.
Swayandcake.com. This Seattle-based boutique has a smaller selection, but I've raved before about the amazing customer service and that's what keeps me coming back time and time again. That, plus a great selection of private-label scarves that are very reasonably priced and my favorite Daftbird basics. Plus, there's free shipping. Swayandcake has good sales.
Stylenotes. This site lists the most updated sales and discounts (for bricks-and-mortar stores, too). If I find something I like, I never pull the trigger until I look here first and make sure I didn't miss a special.
Retailmenot.com. This is another must-visit site before you buy anything. Just type in the name of your shopping site, and you'll see if there's a coupon. What's nice is that people can post comments as to how reliable the coupon is.
Toutie.com. Yet another site that has a forum for posting special deals and discount codes around the Web along with a listing of sites that offer discounts.
Luckymag.com. Perhaps the ultimate time suck. I could spend hours pouring over the in-house blogs (my faves: Shopgirl and the Beauty Department) and also its style and advice section, which offers both a cute staffer-of-the-day outfit along with "Fashion Copycat," which showcases a stylish chick whose look you can copy. Lucky also posts deal-of-the-day finds along with discount codes.
Fashiontoast. Rumi is a well-respected fashion blogger. How respected? Well, she gets flown out to exotic locales at designers' expense and was recently featured in Lucky magazine, which is how I first heard of her. Her photog-boyfriend snaps all the pictures. And, while I marvel at her ego, she does know how to put together a cool outfit. Even more, much of it is thrifted clothing, which is always amazing to me since I don't have the time or patience to root out gems in second-hand stores. She has a companion site, Shoptoast, where you can buy the the very things you see online. So, she's pretty and wicked smart.

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