It's not (just) for girls

The lovely Tricia of bitsandbobbins (and of course founder of wardrobe_remix) sent us an interesting article featured in the Independent which discusses the rise of men choosing to shop online. A survey by management consultants Accenture suggests that most men (56 per cent) today prefer shopping online to the high street, and now premium fashion sites are responding. Men are coming round to the idea that there are more uses to the Internet than watching porn and Family Guy (these are still fundamental uses though).

Are male shoppers in stores like Selfridges an endangered species?

This quote from Alastair Rae, founder of online store albamclothing sums up the reasons why succinctly so I'm just going to use it and expand on it (I've added the italics): "a significant number of men are inherently lazy when it comes to shopping for clothes. They (the lazy ones) annoyingly won't devote what little free time they have to shopping (like you can be too busy to shop!), as women may do, so being able to pick something online at 5pm and get it by lunchtime next day has an obvious appeal. And when men find something they really like, they tend to buy it over and over, so the Internet is the perfect way to do so. You know your size, you see the colour, job done." I personally loved a certain type shopping but I've always known that I was in the minority of men. Most men have a strong idea of what they want (a better word is probably need), they go into a shop that they know and feel vaguely comfortable in, pick the right size and take it to the cashier. No messing around.

The man described above is not me though. I however love strolling around Carnaby Street (Kingly Court, 22, Hurwendeki, Concrete to name a few highlights ), venturing inside Liberty and perusing rack after rack of slightly extravagant and expensiveness niceness. I feel so at home inside shops like these. The side of shopping which means consumerism inside the likes of Topman and H&M is less appealing to me. In these environments I revert back to my inner typical man, a blink and you'll miss it hunter gatherer, within seconds (depending on the size of the queue) I'm walking out with what I wanted. I don't feel anywhere near as comfortable in these blindingly bright, busy and rack muddled High Street stores. This is where the Internet goes in. I know my sizes in these places, I have a good idea of what I like and what suits me and this is where that wonderful thing the world wide web comes in. I don't need to hurt my eyes anymore, nor do I have to tidy up the racks...I can get what I want online!

Despite what the statistics suggest I know that there are men out there who love to shop in stores like this!

Of course there is the other side to Internet shopping, the designer side as well as the High Street and this side is certainly growing and becoming more and more popular. I however prefer to shop for these types of items in person, I enjoy the shopping experience that you can only really get (at the moment anyway) inside the physical store itself. That said, of course I window shop and keep and eye on a bargain on a number of sites...Luisaviaroma, Oki Ni, Matches, Browns, bstore and Oi Polloi, to name just a few of the myriad of online shopping opportunities.

How about you lot- are you shunning the High Street and shopping online instead?