Sydney readers, your cucumber sandwiches are buttered, ready and waiting.

If you’d like to meet Sydney’s fashion bloggers, we’re meeting for high tea this Sunday, 4th March at 2pm.

The guest list includes:

• Petra from Coolchiq
• Helen from Sassybella
• Tania from Rogue Menage, who’s flying up from Melbourne to join us
• Tova from Boutique Oz
• Melanie from Slave to Shopping
• Chrissy & Kimberly from Fashion on a Shoestring
• Harriet and Sarah, whose blog is still in development but promises to be very exciting when…

My favourite web articles this week:

Givin’ ‘em the Slip - Look Rich for Very Little
A call for a return to good underwear. Hear hear!

Be a Shopping Pro
Shopping tips for professional women who hate shopping… but they work for the rest of us, too!

Products live on
If you’ve ever heard that beauty products ‘go off’ and have to be thrown out a few weeks or months after opening them, this article gives a different perspective. (Would marketers…

The Bargain Queen is one year old today! It’s been a crazy year.

Some of the posts I wrote a year ago have survived really well, some of it… not so well.

Here’s the best posts on this blog from February 2006:

Smart shopping is, well, smart
Think women who are interested in shopping are bimbos? Read this.

Save money on your mobile phone
Mr BQ shows Aussie readers how to save money on their mobile phone bills.

IKEA: a love-hate relationship
IKEA:…

Today’s guest post comes from Nadine in New Zealand, who writes a new budget shopping blog called Thriftyspend.

If you’d like to be a guest Bargain Queen, send me an email.

Savemart is a recycled-clothing chain of barn-size shops in New Zealand. You’ve really got to go in there with a plan of attack and a serious chunk of time.

Here’s the shopping tips that recently netted me three great dresses for $65 (and a photo of my…

Today’s guest post comes from Dot, who shares a great bargain-hunting story and a tip we can all use!

This winter, with the two new, complimentary trends of wool peacoats and cold weather, I made up my mind to buy a wool coat. I’m one of those few fortunate people who knows exactly what she wants and what looks good, and I had a very specific vision in mind of what I wanted my coat to be.

…

If you want to reveal your neighbourhood store’s best-kept secrets, brag about your best-ever bargains or simply share some smart shopping tips, this is your chance.

In the coming weeks, The Bargain Queen will welcome aboard a few guest-posters to share the limelight and your shopping secrets. You’ll get to showcase your ideas (and your blog) to my readers, and it will give me some much-needed time to implement a few more improvements to the site…

My favourite web articles this week:

Winter coats: part one and part two
The Sartorialist snapped two very stylish women with budget-conscious solutions to looking great at fashion week.
(You might have to scroll up or down a little to see them — I couldn’t find a way to link directly to them.)

How To Buy A Winter Coat
Great tips for Southern Hemisphere readers, since it’s almost autumn here!

Burdastyle beta
If you like sewing, check out these great free Burda patterns.…

Part five of my series on the fashion industry’s biggest secret.

I’ve shown that the very people who create trends — fashion editors and fashion designers — don’t follow fashion. They have their own style and stick to it. Likewise, the fashion icons that are almost universally declared to be the most stylish people of earth, ignore most trends to do their own thing.

So who does follow fashion?