Online shopping worldwide

For quite some time now I’ve been anxious to see new articles being posted by Chictopia’s “Uglies” sharing their own view on anything fashion on their blog – and suddenly, here I am, absolutely excited to share with you a perhaps slightly deeper insight into my own opinions on this world’s fashion than I usually present in my other blog posts. (Yeah, I can be quite lazy when it comes to writing) But who knows, one or the other fellow Chictopian might even be interested to read it!

By the way, I was told by Helen that the llogo will be changed to “world ugly” pretty soon – all new, all new as spring proceeds!!

With our British friends just having accomplished another try on conquering the North-American continent (you might have heard of Topshop opening their NYC stores not much longer than a second ago), why not writing about what some might call “US fashion” “European fashion”, etc. and what we might consider the differences between the continents.

Without wanting to throw in needless advertising, I must admit I’m a sucker for Ebay. I can spend hours and hours just browsing for whatever comes to my mind and usually, I end up with some great bargains being shipped right to my door. My boyfriend likes to call me “Ebay-addict” as a nickname even.
On Ebay Germany, however, it is extremely hard to find a lot of clothing items that actually meet my (not) very exquisite taste which is why I tend to go shopping on either the British or the US Ebay pages – despite the shipping costs that sometimes can easily reach double the amount of money I actually payed for the item itself.
I just notice that Germans might not be as interested in cute or in any way “special” detailing on the everyday piece of apparel as for example our French neighbours or our friends from London – since it is much harder to find items that seem “interesting” in whatever kind of way not only on German Ebay but also elsewhere in the German speaking fashion-online-shopping world.
Did you ever try to find “Chunky platform wedges” while shopping on a German website? Haha, I wouldn’t even know how to translate it into my mother tongue! And it should surely mean something when you notice young German fashion bloggers desperately asking their readers for help on where and how to get their hands on a pair of gladiator heels.
I suppose with the variety of styles, the size of the country itself and a muuuuch larger number of stores and online boutiques, Americans just have it easier to shop for whatever they feel like wearing than us Germans. I tend to discover very nice items (for example my super comfy Steve Madden platform heels) for 10% of the retail price on ebay.com for which in Germany you might have to pay double the amount of the retail price, just because here it is considered something much more outstanding than it might be in the US.

Of course shopping might be easier if I lived in Berlin or Düsseldorf and not in a boring province city in the middle of nowhere – BUT since it is as it is, at least 50% of my wardrobe consists of items I either bought in another country or had shipped to me from abroad while the other 50% are second-hand and H&M/Zara because I won’t ever in my life walk into either Pimpkie, Orsay or New Yorker clothing stores.
But abroad shopping is easy nowadays, and PayPal makes it easier (ugh, am I advertising again? haha) if you don’t own a credit card – but at the same time more dangerous, too. I always have to try to keep track of my spendings and since I’m a poor student, I really have to keep on looking for good and under retail price sold quality fashion to be able to cope with it.

Do you guys also do it like me and receive parcels from all over the world, containing international fashion you could hardly find if interenet shopping didn’t exist? Oh, and are there Americans that have their items sometimes shipped from a far away spot in the world, too? That would interest me a lot, because I always believe that you lucky guys have no need to do so – you got everything in your country already! Haha… this was the “Wort zum Sonntag”, as we like to say ’round here.

As for German shopping websites, I guess the most famous one is by H&M, as there must be a majority of 99% of German girls shopping at H&M, or online at http://shop.hm.com/de/
Another famous shop must be OTTO, even though it is not as fancy or “young” as H&M, but still on the more pricey level (www.otto.de_) and in the same category I’d also put C&A (www.cunda.de_)
And taking into account German online vintage stores, I want to share one very nice one named ZouZou Vintage with you, they have quality vintage pieces that are truly one of a kind but still mostly very affordable (http://stores.shop.ebay.de/ZouZouVintage)

Have a nice day! :)