Shopping for clothes is not the same experience for a man as it is for a woman. A man goes shopping
because he needs something. His purpose is settled and decided in advance. He knows what he wants,
and his objective is to find it and buy it; the price is a secondary consideration. All men simply walk into a
shop and ask the assistant for what they want. If the shop has it in stock, the salesman promptly produces
it, and the business of trying it on follows at once. All being well, the deal can be and often is completed in
less than five minutes, with hardly any chat and to everyone's satisfaction.
For a man, slight problems may begin when the shop doesn't have what he wants. In that case the
salesman, as the name implies, tries to sell the customer something else, he offers the nearest he can to
the article required. No good salesman brings out such a substitute impolitely; he does so with skill: "I
know this jacket is not the style you want, sir, but would you like to try it for size? It happens to be the
colour you mentioned. "Few men have patience with this treatment, and the usual response is: "This is the
right colour and may be the right size, but I should be wasting my time and yours by trying it on."
Now how does a woman go about buying clothes? In almost every respect she does so in the
opposite way. Her shopping is not often based on need. She has never fully made up her mind what she
wants, and she is only "having a look round". She is always open to persuasion; indeed she sets great
store by what the saleswoman tells her, even by what companions tell her. She will try on any number of
things. Uppermost in her mind is the thought of finding something that everyone thinks suits her. Contrary
to a lot of jokes, most women have an excellent sense of value when they buy clothes. They are always
on the lock- out for the unexpected bargain. Faced with a roomful of dresses, a woman may easily spend
an hour going from one rail to another, to and fro, often retracing her steps, before selecting the dresses
she wants to try on. It is a laborious process, but apparently an enjoyable one. Most dress shops provide
chairs for the waiting husbands.