Braving the Sales

My friend, the artist Amy Sharrocks, recently created a video work in which she stopped passers by in Oxford Street and asked them to hold their breath for as long as possible while she filmed their faces, blotting out all the surrounding noise until the subjects felt the need to take a breath again, whereupon the din of London's premier shopping thoroughfare was restored to the soundtrack.

These oddly touching shoppers' portraits which capture so well the subjects' concentration, willpower and their general sense of anticipation kept coming into my mind as I prepared to go to The Sales this week. Before I bought a single thing, I resolved, I would hold my breath for as long as possible and then ask myself for a sensible second opinion.

Yet deep down we all know how to exploit the sales fully. There are professional sale goers who will happily boast of their techniques, regarding saling as summer's premier sport. You cruise the stores a few days before the sales start. You try on all the things you like in the calm, making some kind of mental selection, then you compute your saletide equations pitching desire against discount, (e.g. would consider it at 70 per cent off but not a penny more) before hiding the things you want in the wrong department. Or you buy what you want at full price and return the purchases on the eve of the sale only to buy back at the new price the following day. Or you cross your fingers and trust to luck, making a discreet appeal to a shop assistant you have befriended previously who may possibly stow it away for you (much more dignified this, but chancy, as someone may offer the full whack and she'll think of her commission and crack.) In this case it is wise to put in a phone call every other day to enquire about 'your' garment , as though it were an infirm relative, for you need to make a regular show of your commitment and you may find out in passing, if there are other admirers to consider....

But none of this is fool proof. There will always be pitfalls You can make your purchase at full price two days before the bargains begin with every intention of returning the garment to rebuy it, but you may be invited out unexpectedly at the eleventh hour and, naturally, you wont be able to resist the lure of something new and the next thing you know a glass of red wine has been spilt over you and you've passively smoked four Cuban cigars in a moment of madness, rendering your brand new palm print Valentiono Roma devore cocktail dress not so much unreturnable as irreparably damaged. It happens.

I may advocate caution but it does take all the fun away. Surely this is not the time to be sensible. If anything it's an opportunity for self-reinvention. When I'm out saling I like to buy something more daring than usual, something shorter, brighter, sheerer, higher, more luxurious or weirder and let the low price tag take the responsibility for the choice away from me. In the January sales I bought a black wool boucle button through Roland Mouret evening cape- something a kinky nurse in a Bunuel film might sport - even though I knew for certain it was something I would never wear. Well guess what? I wear it all the time.

Of course the most vulnerable moments when sale shopping are when there is nothing you like, not even a little bit, and yet you are not prepared to go home empty handed. This is when you are highly liable to make an expensive mistake and you must do exactly the following: go quickly to a department store with a Hanro section in the lingerie hall, buy three pairs of Basic Grace pants, one black, one white, one nude, and remove yourself from the Centre of town as quickly as you can, safe in the knowledge you are carrying the greatest everyday knicker ever made.