It’s the beginning of a new season. An onslaught of trends new and old descends upon you in a myriad of fashion magazines thicker than your standard Yellow Pages and you’re left wondering – how the heck does this translate to my life? In our Season Special, we’ll show which trends are here to stay and how to tweak the new ones to fit your life.
One of the best times to shop for the fall season is outside the season itself. With online shopping it is cheaper than ever for retailers, such as Asos or Zappos, to keep their previous seasons’ wares on display all year around – so they do – on steep discounts. Other retailers run a pre-season sale – such as the infamous Nordstrom Anniversary sale, where you can snag next season pieces at really good discounts. The end-of-summer sales at most retailers are also good opportunities to snap up pieces in year-round fabrics in colors that work both during the summer and winter. Zara has a really great end of season sale and sometimes J. Crew marks down one of their classic pieces (such as the No. 2 pencil) in both last season’s colors and 1 or 2 new season colors. Low budget retailers such as target start putting out some pieces of their fall collection as early as the beginning of July and by the time fall weather rolls around the best pieces are gone.
Here are some great deals I saw during the pre-season. Express ran a Buy 1, Get 1 50% off sale on a colored skinny jegging that was surprisingly long. Asos steeply marked down some winter coats in select sizes from last year. Rather than trying in vain to find classics in your size at this price point – trust me, there aren’t any – use this as an opportunity to look for those special pieces that only look good in a decent quality but that you wouldn’t spend full dollars on because you don’t wear them often enough. Target had this maxi skirt in burnt orange for $ 16. Zappos sold these Dolce Vita desert booties for $79 dollars. They are now back up to their original price on other retailers site and Zappos carries the new model (which looks basically the same) at the $ 125 price point. Zara carried summer knits that carry into the fall season for under $ 25 and light weight wool blazers that work year round in jewel tones at 20% off. J. Crew offered the No. 2 pencil in golden burgundy for $ 70 instead of the regular $110 for a very limited time. It sold out at lightning speed and is now back up to the original price. The NAS had some great leather jackets at discounts up to 50% – this Bebe moto jacket was only $ 290. Finally, DSW and other retailers carried this incredibly comfortable and elegant Via Spiga ankle boot around $ 100 instead of the original $220.
