Once or twice every year, my friend Katrien and I go to Maasmechelen Outlet Village… and those days are pure and utter bliss 🙂 As soon as our kids are dropped off at school, we leave for Maasmechelen, which is about a 1,5 hour drive for us. OK, that’s quite a long drive to do some shopping, but it gives us the chance to chatter away… we’ve always got stuff to talk about, so no problems there 🙂

We usually arrive just before the shops open and we start our shopping spree with a coffee in one of the cafés. After we have dosed up with cafeine, it’s time to hit the shops!!

Maasmechelen Outlet Village is actually one large street, filled with shops who sell previous collections at outlet prices and who doesn’t love to strike a bargain?! I know I do!!!! A lot of fashion brands have a store in Maasmechelen : Boss, McGregor, Karen Millen, Liu Jo, Scapa, Ted Baker, Escada, Essentiel, Calvin Klein, Versace, Hilfiger… need I say more?!

We’ve got  a certain routine which we follow… we start browsing in the shops we are interested in… trying on something here and there, sometimes asking if something can be reserved for a couple of hours,… But at that point we’re not buying just yet… oh no… we first want to make up our minds and see as many shops as possible. Over a drink and a late lunch we think about the things we saw… discussing what we liked best, checking out photos if we’ve taken any,… and then the last couple of hours we go back to the shops where we saw interesting stuff, we try things on again to make up our minds whether we really want to buy it… We rarely do bad bargains that way. To end our day we eat in one of the restaurants of the outlet village, returning home not before 9 pm!

I usually end up buying quite classic stuff at Maasmechelen. Here on my blog you could see already outfits styled with stuff that I bought on previous shopping sprees… like this LBD, which I crowned as my best outlet buy ever, or this fab Karen Millen dress, these classic woollen pants and these casual beige pants.

Now, what our shopping spree of last week is concerned we had to change our plans a bit as my friend’s daughter went on a skitrip with school and she would be leaving that evening. So we only could stay until about 3pm as my friend obviously had to be back to see her daughter off. As we have been to Maasmechelen lots of times before, we knew which shops we definitely wanted to see and so we decided to skip the rest to save time.

I didn’t have anything in particular on my shopping list, but I would look out for a classic trenchcoat and something festive for the parties which are lined up during spring and summer.

And well, my dearest followers… I can assure you that yours truly ended up buying a fab trench at Coach  which was by the way at a 70% discount!! My new trench was starring in last Saturday’s outfitpost which you can see here… Well… what do you think of this fab classic?!

At Liu Jo I bought  a long dark blue silk skirt with a short blue blazer with a gold thread in it, a fab dress in dark blue with beige polkadots and a beautiful marine sweater with blue and white stripes.

At Karen Millen I bought a white midi skirt and at Calvin Klein I bought some perfume and bodylotion : Eternity… it had been ages since I smelled this perfume! My sister used to wear it in the good old nineties, so it was actually a trip down memory lane when I smelled that perfume again and I couldn’t resist buying it 🙂

So again I bought some classic pieces that are definitely a worthy addition to my wardrobe!

At 3 pm sharp we drove off with a car full of shopping bags feeling very satisfied with our newest purchases… when is our next trip?!

Love, Kathleen

Here you can read about another trip I did with my friend Katrien!