It's a hassle-pushing through department store crowds, scouring rack after rack for prospective outfits, and trying on item after item in the dressing room.
But a growing number of Chinese are discovering a faster and easier way to try on more outfits in less time, making the quest for the perfect buy more convenient than ever.
Many shoppers are discovering "virtual dressing rooms" - that is, sections on some clothing companies' websites allowing users to create a model of themselves according to their physical features and "try on" clothing and accessories at mouse-click speed.
The concept has been popular in the West for some time. On Swedish brand H&M's US website, for example, users can select a standard model or create a personalized model according to their measurements, hairstyles, skin tones and other features.
They can dress and undress these models at the click of a mouse, saving the outfits they like most in their "wardrobes" or printing the images.
One of the more popular Chinese online dressing rooms is www.41go.cn.
In addition to personalizing models, the site's users can upload their own images, and they can turn the model around so they can see what the outfit looks like on them from different angles.
The site also offers a variety of backdrops for the models to stand against.
After selecting the outfits they want to buy, it's just another click of the mouse, and the clothes are in the mail.
Wang Qi, who works for a cosmetics sales firm in Shanghai, says she enjoys the convenience.
"It's great that you can see exactly how the outfit will look on you by using the model," the 24-year-old says. "It makes shopping for clothes online far less risky."
Christian Zhang, who works for a foreign firm in Shanghai, says using online wardrobes is a wonderful way to quickly find the best-matching outfits.
"You can try on sweaters, skirts, trousers, boots and even accessories so quickly. It would just be impossible at a big shopping mall."
Figures from Paipai.com, an online shopping website affiliated with Tencent Inc, show that an average user will change outfits 50 to 80 times. When Paipai.com developed the service in September 2007, it was its first project in the field of consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce.
"The online dressing room has been widely welcomed by Internet users, especially women," the firm's public relations manager Yang Sha says.
In addition to the convenience, many consumers reported they enjoyed the DIY aspect, Yang adds.
"This stimulates their appetites for shopping and boosts our sales."
Paipai.com plans to develop a 3D version of the service soon.
However, while online dressing rooms offer many advantages, it will be some time before a larger number of clothing firms provide them.
According to a sales director surnamed Qin from DIY Serve, an online dressing room technology developer, it costs large companies with extensive product selections several hundred thousand yuan for companies to buy the technology.
"This technology can be too costly and complicated for many online stores," Qin says.
"It's easy for the users to just click a mouse, but it's difficult for technicians to develop the dressing rooms."
He added that much of the recently developed technology is inadequate to render complicated garment designs.
And some consumers, such as 21-year-old Wei Wei, who is a frequent online shopper, also have doubts.
"Even if I look at the model, I still can't really see exactly what it will actually look like on my real body," the junior at Shanghai International Studies University says.
It seems the advantage of online dressing rooms is the ability to examine a vast selection of clothes more quickly than is possible in real life. The disadvantage is a concern about the accuracy of the renderings.
"The worst thing about buying clothes online is the contrast between the picture and the actual garment," Zuo Yan, a college student in Shanghai who selects many outfits online, says.
"Sometimes, the pictures of the clothes are so beautiful, but the actual items are trash."
