Online shopping has revolutionised my frantic weekend shop for a Saturday night garment. First, I know I won't be emptying my bank account only to find a similar item carpeting the floors of H&M, and second, I won't have spent hours of my life clamouring across parents desperately trying to dress their 10-part family for a particular wedding or christening. That’s not even mentioning the fact that it is no longer contained to a weekend, the ease, speed and convenience of online shopping means that I could even do it in my lunch-break. Surfing the web for clothes is the only way, in my view, to get a complete picture of what's out there and what price is reasonable. Google is a wonderful thing.
The dilemma when it comes to online shopping however, is whether the hours saved in the shopping process are substituted by hours spent returning unwanted or misfitting items. This would be true, if I hadn't already been put off the fitting room by the gaggle of teenage girls and the overly attentive shop assistant. Even if you do have the patience for the fitting room, Virtusize, which claims to offer a virtual fitting room and has recently been introduced by ASOS in the UK, could pack the final punch for traditional shopping.
Not yet able to show how a garment appears on a virtual you – that would be true genius – Virtusize comes close, by comparing the fit of a garment to one you already have. Laying the garments over each other, a shopper can see what parts may be tight and where they can afford a bit of ‘breathing room’. With impressive results, such as fit-related returns being reduced by as much as 50 percent, it’s hard to deny the potential of the virtual fitting room.
For the hardy shopper, the virtual fitting room may still not match up to the real thing, and may indeed be considered superfluous to the shopping experience. For an online-enthusiast like me however, online shopping just got a whole lot more accurate!
Comments