It’s kind of sad that Christmas is now dominated by present-buying followed immediately by sales-buying, but I do make the majority of my large fashion investments during sale times and I also like to stock up on little bargains to give as birthday presents throughout the year! Penhaligons has some absolutely beautiful things reduced by up to 60% – really cool and quirky. Think Mad Hatter’s Tea Party if it took place on a princess’s dressing table! Penhaligons

For fashion, there’s no better, really, than the Net-a-Porter sale in terms of the sheer number of brands represented and the scale of discount being applied. I have bought some real gems over the years. The trick to shopping the Net-a-Porter sale is to “shop all”, refine by size (small, medium, large etc) and then RESIST sorting by price. Disregard price completely. There’s nothing more tempting than a huge reduction in price, but do you really like those shoes, or do they call to you because they were £850 and they’re now £87? If you won’t ever wear them then £87 is too much – the pain of having to re-sell on eBay makes the whole thing a farce. Learn to skim the “virtual rails” without looking at price – when you love something by sight, and it’s something you know you’d wear, flick through the photos and then add it to your wishlist. Don’t look at the prices of anything until you get to right at the end of your scouring and enter your wishlist. Try this method – you might find that it works for you! I know that it has cut down the amount of total crap that I sometimes end up buying! Net-a-Porter SALE

ASOS. ASOS have some quite ridiculous reductions this year – unfortunately I have no method for shopping the ASOS sale other than just ploughing your way through, elbows out, stamping on the feet of those who dare to get in your way. You can use the “wishlist” routine, detailed above, but things do disappear quickly so I’d say if you love something, add to basket and BUY BUY BUY! ASOS Sale

There are some fab bits and pieces thrown all over the shops – I particularly love the CashCa slippers in the picture above – a gorgeously soft pair of cashmere slippers that have been reduced from £85 down to £40. They’re at Selfridges here. Little finds like these do make the sales well worth having a scoot about – there are also some lovely things at the Liberty sale and on Heal’s – Heal’s were actually on sale pre-Christmas as they’re having a refurbishment sale. If you’re making big furniture decisions then check them out first – things that would normally be way off-the-scale expensive are actually quite reasonable! Heal’s Sale

In terms of beauty, it’s hard to beat the SpaceNK sale. It has become something of a ritual, for me, to buy next year’s stocking fillers from them! (Is that outrageous? I don’t think so. Nothing ever goes off!) This year they have NUXE, Elemental Herbology, Laura Mercier and Diptyque hiding in amongst the bargains. Loads at 50% off – you’d be mad not to have a little look, but be warned: it’s difficult not to go OTT! SpaceNK