I'd rather not deal with the impossible parking and swarms of people on Black Friday, but I'd still like to save on Christmas gifts. Help!
—Helen, via the Ask Style inbox

Forget Black Friday. Think larger. Think Black November, Inky December, and onward. Sales are big this season, and free shipping (that crucial gimme for online shoppers) is easy to find! Let's start with the department stores—simply because they're great for crossing off as many people on your list as possible.

Macy's is doing some very nice things for customers over the next several weeks, including—yes—free shipping on any Coach purse over $150. That may sound small, and it is, unless you remember that you're avoiding the huge number of mouth-breathers who pack the malls starting Friday, and the fact that if you also take care of all your accessories shopping at Macy's online, and spend over $75 on jewelry, watches, lingerie—whatever—that shipping is also free.

Over at Nordstrom, the deal is even better: Free shipping. On anything. As long as you buy $100 worth of stuff. Period.

At Anthropologie, that store to end all stores, the trigger amount for free shipping is $150. That means you can get free shipping on the incredibly, ridiculously cool Flight of Swans holiday dress, the current obsession of the store's very savvy sales staff.

But the deals go beyond shipping. For the best up-to-date sales minute by minute, my current favorite aggregator is good old Amazon. Why? Because it sorts sales according to whether they are current or in the future, so that you can plan for upcoming shopping jags. Plus, they currently have so many shoes on sale as part of their Thanksgiving holiday deal—including the indispensable Steve Madden—that it's hard to go wrong. 

If you're looking for something a little higher end, I have another suggestion. Most of the best fashion websites won't say when they have sales coming up; they just start a sale. They're also terrible about telling you how long something is on sale for. ("While supplies last" never helped anybody.) So go to ShopStyle.com and join their sales alert email list. You can even specify by designer which news you want, and when. 

Tailored savings! Now that's beautiful.

Got a burning question for the StyleSpy? Click here to submit it, then come back to mystyle every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to see if she answers you