DISCOUNTED: swish work dresses from Marks & Spencer

You may not be aware of this because you haven’t made it past the HORDES of snowy-haired, sharp-elbowed M&S devotees at the swing doors, but Marks & Spencer currently has a good discount offer on.

It’s 20% off, across menswear, homeware, selected furniture, knitwear (including cashmere), dresses, socks and tights. A couple of the premium ranges are excluded but effectively, a good chunk of the store is currently discounted. The discount is automatically applied at checkout, and applies both online and in many bricks-and-mortar M&S shops.

Today I went into my local M&S and was thoroughly peeved to find out that the mint green sweater I’d had my eye on, discounted from £12.50 to £10, was now sold out in my size. The bright side was that on a pootle around the store, I came across some great dresses for work, if you work in an office. Smart without being fogeyish; stylish without being bottom-skimming. (As a side note: why do retailers do this? Seriously, who over the age of 20 wears a work dress that gives you butt underhang?) And of course, all these dresses were discounted by 20%. Here are a few of my favourites:

Zig Zag Fit & Flare Spotted Tea Dress: reduced from £39.50 to £31.60. Also available in black.

Spotted Fit & Flare Tea Dress (not pictured): reduced from £39.50 to £31.60. Again, you’ll need to click through to see the fabric, with its little white polka dots, at its best.

Black shift dress: reduced from £35 to £28.

Ruched shift dress with StayNEW: reduced from £29.50 to £23.60. This indigo number with the ruched tummy panel is the bestselling dress on the Marks & Spencer site. The StayNEW thing is supposed to help the fabric keep its colour and stay bobble-free for longer.

Geometric Print Tunic Dress: reduced from £35 to £28. This isn’t a brocade dress: it’s a flat pattern, just busy.

Lips print shift dress: reduced from £45 to £36. You’ll have to click through to take a proper look at this one: the lips print is great. Also, despite being relatively fitted for a shift, this dress is tremendously forgiving on mum tums around the waist.

Skater Dress with StayNEW: reduced from £19.50 to £15.60. I’ll be honest: I am really pleased that Marks & Spencer does this skater dress, for such a low price. I really like skater dresses: they hang nicely, swing sweetly, can be bunged in the machine, rarely need ironing and are so comfortable. The problem is, most skater dresses have such teeny-weeny skirts. (I suppose that strictly, so do skaters – but you know what I mean.) This dress has a longer skirt and the M&S jersey fabric is really good: it’s soft and stays in good condition for years and years. This dress is turquoise, but also comes in black, red, pansy print and daisy print. I have the black one.

It isn’t clear when the 20% discount offer ends: the website terms & conditions merely state that the closing date is “subject to uptake,” which isn’t hugely helpful. So get in while you can: partly because of this and partly because, in my local M&S at least, the nice stuff is flying off the shelves.

[Marks & Spencer: 20% off menswear, homeware, selected furniture, dresses and hosiery.]