With the holiday season fast approaching, most of us are soon going to be scanning the stores in search of that perfect gift for everyone on our list. The problem is that in our modern society of overconsumption, everybody’s already got everything they need, and then some.

It has become especially tricky to purchase gifts for kids who nowadays seem to get bored with the latest technology after only mere minutes of use. To the risk of sounding my age, I will ask you to recall when it was so simple that we’d have oodles of long-lasting fun with just a plain doll we’d dress and undress to our changing moods or a new model car we’d move through a plastic one-dimensional racetrack. Well, there’s a way to make it simple again and that solution lies at the McCord Museum.

Have you ever decided upon a frivolous purchase and, once your platinum card had been entrusted in the (not always so) caring hands of the salesperson across the counter and guilt had started to set in, you were pleasantly surprised with a relatively generous discount as part of a special “tax-free” or “members-only” day at the store? It happened to me last month, after a considerably large purchase at Guess?, and looking back I’m not even sure what I did with the money I had then saved unknowingly. Well, if this has happened to you recently, consider the following.

Online shopping is no longer just a trend; it has become a way of life for many women between the ages of 25 and 45. Convenient, fast and easy, it allows us to tap into collections we may not find in local stores. A few simple clicks and a credit card (or a PayPal account) are all it takes to build a unique wardrobe.

While there are many sites out there that allow us to buy designer clothes at fractions of the retail price, there are also sites that give a voice to the community, enabling young designers to reach a mass, international audience with ease. Threadless.com is one of them.

Part of the fun of writing a column about Montreal lifestyle is that I get to leave the fashion world every now and again and bring you news about random things to do and places to visit around town. Because, not unlike what people living in most mega-cities in North America experience, even if you’ve been living in Montreal your whole life, you never quite get to uncover all of its treasures.

Karen Pine of the University of Hertfordshire has conducted a study that demonstrates that women’s monthly fluctuations in hormones are in fact correlated with their shopping habits and the amount they spend ‑ or in my case, overspend ‑ on these purchases. Today I thought I’d test this theory, albeit unknowingly, as I headed out to hunt some boots for the fall season.

So I may be a bit late on buying items for fall, given that the season is now almost over with snowfalls already occurring in some parts of the province, but I haven’t been able to find a pair of knee-high black leather boots that appealed to me, and I absolutely need exactly that as it is the only thing missing from my wardrobe at this moment (if I’m honest, this means until the next fashion crisis in a few days).

Montreal may be a buzzing metropolis of 1.6M residents but within certain communities, it can sometimes feel like everybody knows one another. That is the case for the English blogging community.  We meet at every fashionable event in town and at various gatherings, including our very own B.A.B.E. celebration.  We keep in touch through Twitter, Facebook, SMS, blogs… we are in constant interaction and it can sometimes feel like friendship. While for some there are ties that are real, we must not overlook that we only know what others want us to know.

Do you ever find that you may be focusing on things that aren’t of great importance to the world? I know I sometimes do. Oh, it may be just a passing thought as I struggle over which shoes to put on in the morning, but I wonder nonetheless. Well, I just found a way to combine a fashionable world with good etiquette.

On August 12, for a 4th consecutive year, close to 300 ALDO employees chose to leave the designer shoes at home in favour of denim overalls – if only for a very, very brief, incognito moment – all in the name of a good cause: the complete overhaul of Moisson Montreal's headquarters.

Most of you have, by now, heard or attended B.A.B.E., but few of you know that it actually started out as a lunch idea only a few weeks before the actual event was to unfold. We thought, now that the event has passed and that most of you are already anticipating the next one, we’d let you in on the action-packed challenges we encountered.