Better shop around? - shopping as a hobby; Pleasure & Its Perils

YOU PAY your money, you take your chances. Will the gown create a sensation? Will the caviar be delectable? Will the limousine purr gently? Will the Pekinese have a good disposition? Even the most mundane purchase bears the element of risk.

But let us concern ourselves not with routine commercial transactions. Let us focus here on those ardent shoppers whose approach to merchandise is more in the spirit of big-game hunters or horse players.

Even baseball can be interesting to spectators schooled in its details, fans who trouble themselves to learn the players' individual quirks, the various team propensities. Shopping, similarly, is most compelling to those who devote themselves to the minutiae of merchandise, the connoisseurs who can walk through a department store noting in passing that Estee Lauder has fallen victim to the Santa Fe obsession in her choice of lipstick tones this year and that Geoffrey Beene is once again recycling his favorite circle motif. Reflective shoppers weigh their options carefully. Is this the season to invest in one of Oscar de la Renta's extravagant beaded jackets, or is he apt to use a more flattering color next time? Should you spring for Bill Blass's spectacular pearl-strap cocktail dress or gamble that Victor Costa will concoct an acceptable knockoff?

The underlying challenge is to balance one's need for the item with its asking price. When our friend left her house one hot August day it had not occurred to her that she might be in want of three identical fitted velvet Ralph Lauren suits in assorted colors. But the sample sale price made them irresistible.

Too good a bargain to be true is not without pitfalls. The classic trap is the garment that does not quite fit, but will -- as soon as one loses those five extra pounds. Hence the white fringed leather jacket and gold lame tube dress that have never made an appearance outside the closet. BUT an unbelievable price is sheer ecstasy if the item happens to be something you can actually use. Imagine the elation of the woman out on a price- comparison foray for oversized French doors who found the twenty sets she needed remaindered at a lumber yard for pennies.

In serious shopping, as in comedy, timing is all. Should you buy it now or wait until you need it? The decorator who left the perfect yellow brocade behind in a Paris shop spent dozens of annoying hours the next year trying to find a substitute. Whereas another designer has ended up with a garage full of overcarved settees and divans waiting for the client who might want to furnish a Victorian cottage.

This matter of timing is particularly perilous when one yearns for the item but doesn't really need it. What if you wait to buy the navy-edged bathing suit? Will it still be on the rack here at Saks, and maybe even reduced in price, next spring when the weather's warm enough to wear it? Devotees establish cruising paths to monitor items they're waiting to buy on sale, moving methodically from the burlap espadrilles, to the shocking pink cashmere shawls, to the ``Bad Hair Day'' baseball caps, in vigilant hope of the first signs of a markdown.

International shopping doubles these challenges. A Chanel suit always used to be cheaper at the flagship Paris store on the Rue Cambon. Now the dollar's decline has turned the old rules upside down. If you wait, will it cost less back home at Bergdorf's?

Hesitation can result in post-vacation angst. Leave behind the blue canvas pocketbook in the Vienna boutique, and you may spend a full morning telephoning all your Austrian friends until one agrees to run over to Ringstrasse and pick it up to mail to you.

Flea-market shopping, with one-of-a-kind merchandise and bargaining de rigueur, is the ultimate challenge. Adhering to the Moscow Rule espoused by shopping guru Suzy Gershman minimizes the fun. ``If you like it, buy it,'' she cautions. ``Don't expect it to be there if you wait to come back.'' Of course if you do wait, you're apt to be able to buy it for less. But then . . . For every tale of the antique pine washstand you got, there's the converse woe of the one that got away. Decades later, disappointed devotees can reel off the list -- an antique Army knife, an aqua hobnail glass bowl, a set of Burma Shave signs, the Mercedes Benz gearshift handle.

When the color isn't quite right, the proportions are a little off, the risk is intensified. An iron vined picture frame with green enamel shamrocks tempted one tourist, but it was a little too big, so she ambivalently left it behind in Saint Martin and sailed off to Anguilla. Two days later she reconsidered and caught the ferry back to take another look. The size still bothered her, and so she went on to another store, thinking it over. Two hours later she decided what the hell, returned to buy it, and found that someone else had snapped it up.

The truth can be stranger than fiction. Our friend fell in love with a daringly low-cut Ungaro original which Filene's Basement had marked down from $3,000 to only $500. She took it home but spent ten days shopping in vain for an appropriate undergarment. Every bra showed above the decolletage. The dress was no bargain, even at a sixth of its original price, if she couldn't wear it outside the house. Back it went to the Basement.