Tips for outlet shopping

I'm impressed not only by the savings I found at Bicester Village, but by having found four pieces into which I could actually shovel my breasts. If your figure doesn't fit into standard sizes then outlets are a great place to buy clothes.

When attacking the outlet malls, it's worth checking out labels whose clothes don't normally work for you for, as well as last season's discounted shop lines, often production samples, wrongly sized and incorrectly fitted pieces end up on outlet rails too.

I'm still wearing a fabulous light tweed, funnel necked Karen Millen dress (frankly, never my label of choice), a production sample that had never made it into the main line (probably why I liked it) that picked up off a remainder rail at BV about eight years ago.

In my case, I've never known a Reiss dress to fit me - they generally cut for less well-endowed women, so I suspect the dress, with a perfectly-fitted-for-a-large-busted-woman top, that I bought for half full retail price, had found its way there precisely because busty women like me don't think to shop in Reiss as a rule.

In French Connection, one of the only High Street stores whose clothes fit me, the dresses I bought were both a UK12, which I am not, so it's worth trying on different sizes at Outlets if your usual one has sold out.

Above all: if you wouldn't buy it at full price, then don't buy it at half. You will never wear it.