Its 3pm in the afternoon and I’ve just come out of yet another boring lecture. My mind feels like mush and I feel as if I’m in need of some serious retail therapy. My plan is to spend the afternoon casually browsing through a few of my favourite shops and hopefully find a bargain. Unfortunately, Little Miss Shop Assistant does not want to leave me alone and insists on following me round the store suggesting ugly garments for me to try on. So instead, I go back home and satisfy my need for retail therapy on the internet and that’s when I came across it….
…what I see as the next step forward in online shopping., the H&M website. For those of you who don’t know H&M, it’s a stylish and affordable Swedish clothing label for both men and woman, very popular in Europe and unfortunately not available in Australia.
Anyway, I have never been a huge fan of online shopping, my main reason being that you cannot try the clothes on. However, I was very impressed with the ‘Fashion Studio’ function of the H&M website. Basically, its an electronic version of playing dress ups with Barbie and Ken. First you choose your model (many nationalities to choose from), then you dress him or her up in any outfit you like. Dresses, bags, scarfs, underwear…the whole kit and caboodle! While some of you more experienced online shoppers may not be so impressed with this, I personally thought it was pretty cool. I was especially impressed with some small details such as being able to leave a top hanging out, tuck it in to a skirt or even wrap a belt around it. You can even change the backdrop to see what the outfit looks like in day or night.
For me, the experience was quite enjoyable and if this function was available on more websites, especially for clothing brands which are not available in Australia., I may seriously start considering buying clothes online.
So bravo H&M, I am impressed by this function and think other clothing stores should follow their lead.
Images taken from H&M website
Here’s a link to the site…
