Shopping Trip! How I Shop at Winners

Ah, I just love a long weekend - Thursday was a holiday in Canada (Remembrance Day), so I took Friday off too. The lovely Cat also had the day off, so we met up for brunch and went shopping at Winners (I had my $60 gift card to spend!).

A trip to Winners is not to be taken lightly. Many people find it overwhelming: all those racks just jammed with clothes, people and shopping carts everywhere, and so much to look at! It's exhausting just thinking about it.

That's why I plan very carefully in advance, starting with what I'm going to wear. I nearly always wear a dress to shop at Winners (or any other big store, like Value Village) simply because it's easy to take on and off. Who wants to mess with jeans or a button-up shirt in a fitting room? Not me!

I've numbered my key areas below:
1. Earrings: small rhinestone studs. They're not going to snag on anything that I try on, or likely to go flying off if I pull tops overy my head.

2. Wide neckline: this makes it easier to get the dress on and off without messing up my hair, knocking my glasses off or rubbing off my makeup on to my clothes.

3. Statement necklace: no rough edges anywhere on this, so no snagging on sweaters. It also helps keep this outfit from being totally boring.

4. Tights: these pair also have control top, so if I'm trying on any skirts or dresses, I know exactly how they are going to fit. I also went with a neutral colour (these are heathered grey) so that they don't distract from whatever I'm trying on. Tights are not useful if you're shopping for pants, however - if I were shopping for jeans or dress pants, I'd go bare-legged but with high socks and boots.

5. Slip-on low-heeled shoes: I walked to town in these, then shopped for 3 hours, then walked home from town. My feet felt fine! Slip-on shoes are essential for shopping; messing about with buckles or laces is a huge pain when you're trying on shoes, or have to take off your shoes to try on a dress, skirt or pants.

Dress (Max Studio), tights (probably Hue), shoes (Kenneth Cole Reaction, gift from Cat), necklace (Shi Studio).

It was a nice sunny, but crisp, day. Shopping in outerwear can be exceedingly annoying; there's nothing worse than getting sweaty and feeling bulky when you're shopping - it will wear your patience. I went with a thin 3/4-sleeved jacket:
This allows me to get my hands right into the racks without sleeve cuffs getting in the way.

A few warm accessories keeps me from freezing my butt off:

Someone was hiding in the side of the photo (see him?).

Long suede gloves to fill in the gap with the short jacket sleeves, and a nice wooly soft cashmere scarf (thin and lightweight). Both of those items easily went into my purse while I shopped.

Jacket (Smart Set), scarf (Club Monaco), gloves (Le Chateau), bag (Ollie & Nic).

Heading to the mall in the Loser Cruiser!

Oh yeah! I find riding the bus a very Zen-like experience. You miss a bus...another will come. There is no stress...you just get off when you want.

And we arrive!

The store is starting to get their Christmas stuff in (already? man!).

We headed to the hosiery, belts and purses section first:

Scouted for deals - I always find interesting stuff in the hosiery department.

I always use a shopping cart at Winners. Just toss everything you are even remotely interested in into the cart, and sort through it later. If you plan to go back for something, odds are that it'll be gone when you return.

Cat and I have a good start: some knee-highs for me, some tights and a belt for her:

I always head to the shoe department next (I get very excited about shoe departments, giddy almost). Check out the awesome boots I found: They're sort of a black-purple mix. Love the studs, too. I squealed about these for a good hour. I'll be wearing these soon!

I also do a scout of the mens' shoe section - I know how L's shoes fit on my feet so I am pretty good at picking out shoes for him. These rockin' shoes were too good to pass up, especially at $32.00:

He loved them!

After we combed all the shoe racks (you have to check through all the size sections, because people move things around), we headed over to the clothes section:

Dresses and outerwear first. I go through the clearance sections, then scout through for anything that catches my eye. Because I already have a black winter coat and several black dresses, I narrowed my focus to colour.

We then moved into the actual clothing sections, dragging our shopping cart with us and parking it at the end of the aisles so we could keep an eye on it and make sure no one pilfered our fab finds.

I start at one end and work my way down:

I search for interesting colours, patterns and clothing that feels nice. I'll also check out how an item is faring from being handled on the racks. Satins that are getting fuzzy in the shoulders and cashmere sweaters that are starting to pill just from being together are a big "no, thanks" for me.

The racks are not as scary as they seem, because there is so much duplication. You're likely to see the same sweater 50 times in all sizes. This makes the racks faster to go through, since you can skip over the duplicates and watch for the unique items.

By the time we've done the racks, it's been about 2.5 hours of shopping. I'm getting tired! Time to head for the fitting rooms, which are back in the shoe department.

Because they only allow a limited number of items in the fitting room, we parked our cart and started going through stuff we could try on in the aisle, like sweaters, coats and jackets:

You can eliminate a lot of things this way, and save yourself time in the fitting room. I tried on a coat, 3 sweaters and a jacket (as well as those boots again) in front of the big mirror.

I only had to take 4 things into the fitting room, which sped things up and made the try-on experience much easier. I ended up with a sweater, a cardigan, a top, some knee-highs and a pair of boots! I'll be wearing them all this week!

And that's how I shop at Winners! This type of shopping strategy also works in other large department store type of environments, like Value Village or a big thrift store.

(Note: I have no affiliation with Winners - this is just one of the places that I shop a couple times a year. No compensation was received by me for this feature.)