How I do efficient bargain hunting of fashion

In collaboration with Lyst

I am not a big fan of clothes shopping. I like to be efficient, in and out and back home in no time. I am also not a fan of spending money. I do however have a rather gorgeous selection of office wear from high quality brands and I credit that all for some clever bargain hunting. I usually search for brands I know are brilliant quality, check only their items that are 70% off, and update my work wardrobe on the cheap but with the top notch stuff. 

Lyst is my newest weapon for fashion shopping and bargain hunting, and I gotta tell you, it has been a huge help! I challenged myself to update my work wardrobe for mere £50, and I'll explain how I located some fabulous finds using Lyst.  

Lyst is great for internet bargain hunting. It is a website that lets you trawls through multiple web shop fronts at one time, using style and type, colour, size, designer, retailer, material, prize and current discounts. It is the ability to set the search for current discounts (20%/50%/70% off)  and a maximum price which make Lyst so brilliant for bargain hunting. 

So the challenge I set for myself was to update my work wardrobe by just £50... I ended up spending £54 for two gorgeous dresses from Phase 8, saving myself around £140 from RRP. Considering the great quality of Phase 8 dresses I see that as a huge bargain. 

My first pick was  a dark blue and white stripey dress (as I love stripes), which I styled with an older white and blue stripey jersey blazer from Part Two, a pair of tan moccasins from Massimo Dutti, and my tan Marc by Marc Jacobs. This I can see myself wearing both at the office, as well as in town as an off-duty look.

My second pick was a summery blue and white flower dress with a bow. It is stylish enough to be worn any day from Monday to Friday, but (thankfully) not so boring to be confined to just the working week either. Here I just style it with a cream coloured Furla bag and golden beige ballerinas. I can see this dress being styled with a dark blue blazer to make it look more "office" and worn just by itself on warm summer (or even autumn!) days. 

To find these bargains, I set the search for dresses, for 70% off or more in sales, under £30 and in my size (18). I did a quick trawl through, marked my favourite items with a little heart, and after I had spent a bit of time looking around went back to my favourites list and chose the best from there. Lyst also says that the more you use it, the more it recognises your style and shows you items it knows you prefer. Even better! 

While I liked using Lyst for bargain hunting, there were a few niggles. Presumably because sales items move fast, sometimes Lyst would give me false hits, raising my hopes of finding something amazing for dirt cheap, and then either the item or the size I was after was actually already sold out. 

This didn't happen with normal price items which usually have plenty of stock. In fact, I tried searching some specific items I have been after for a while by using type and colour as guides, and got lots of hits. In the future this site will be one of my go to places when I am searching for something very specific - it does the job of checking all those high street web shops so I don't have to! 

And now, I think I will try and hunt some more bargains using Lyst...

Have you found any good fashion bargains recently?

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