With developing a style naturally comes the desire to buy new clothes to match it. You may be used to buying clothes with your family, but what about when you want to start buying clothes for yourself? We’ve listed the three most commonplace places to find clothing to help you decide.
Of course, this isn’t an exhaustive list of where you’ll be able to buy clothes. There’s bound to be several other kinds of opportunities and events in your local area that’ll have at least one clothes booth or two if you look hard enough. So the best advice we can give for where the best place to buy clothes is; get out and find them for yourself!
where to shop for clothes
malls
The most common place to buy clothes from, and the one you’re probably already familiar with. Most malls have their own department store with a clothing section, alongside a wide variety of other branded stores to browse through.
pros
- Most stores inside malls will have dressing rooms for you to try out clothes in properly before you purchase them.
- Major department stores and clothing stores will also usually provide alteration services to help make clothes fit better after you buy them.
cons
- Sometimes stores will only display clothes within a certain range of sizes. If an item you want doesn’t fit, it doesn’t hurt to ask the staff if they have the same item in smaller or larger sizes in storage.
- Depending on the store, the prices can be way higher than you probably expect. If you want to get the best bang for your buck, most stores will have sales or discount promos around the holidays or will post on social media when they’re going to hold one.
thrift stores
The wild card option for clothes - thrift stores sell a wide assortment of clothes that have either been donated or given away by bigger stores, all for a lower price than what they’d go for at larger stores. Some may look down on buying clothes from here, but don’t be fooled - these stores often have troves of unique pieces just waiting to be found.
pros
- Good thrift stores will make sure that the clothes they’re selling are properly sanitized, and most will only need a thorough cleaning or some minor repairs to look as good as new.
- Buying and wearing secondhand clothes is better for the environment, and helps save clothes have been thrown away but are otherwise still totally wearable from being dumped into landfills
cons
- Because their stock is random, the displays can get messy compared to regular stores. Be prepared to spend some time sorting through racks and piles of clothes yourself.
- While you can certainly find unique and vintage pieces here, don’t expect to suddenly find branded or trendy pieces amongst the piles unless you’re particularly luckily or go to a specially-curated shop.
online stores
Thanks to the wonders of the internet, there are now plenty of online shops for clothes, either alongside physical stores or as their main platform. All you need is an account and a payment method set up (with your family’s permission, of course) for your shop of choice, and you’re all ready to buy!
pros
- Convenience is easily the biggest benefit of online shopping over other options. There’s nothing like being able to shop from the comfort of your own home!
- Online shops make it easy to find and buy items from different fashion styles or specialty pieces you usually wouldn’t find at local physical stores.
cons
- You can’t always trust products to be the same as how they look in the pictures. Always be sure to look for ratings or reviews from others to see if the product is of good quality and if the shop is trustworthy.
- Reading the sizing labels matters much more online since you can’t try the clothes out before buying. Be sure to check which sizing chart they use or, better yet, see if they provide exact number measurements to compare with your own.