Is Fashion Cheaper on Black Friday or in the January Sales?

Each year, January arrives to remind us that it's the best time to buy fashion, if you can stand to wait.

You see, after all the discounts (and the salespeople) have had their say, January is the month when the markdowns get serious, often by 30%, 50%, or even more on soft goods like clothing and textiles.

And that’s to say nothing of clearance items, which, in their final gasp, can be found at great percentage sales, so long as you don’t mind coming across them in entirely collapsing piles.

If you’re choosing when to purchase garments, direct your attention away from slogans and toward the real signals: when inventory is high and when retailers are desperate to sell that inventory, they push their prices down.

Important dates for 2025

In the calendar, Black Friday falls on Friday, November 28, 2025, and you can double-check that on Awareness Days. Cyber Monday follows on Monday, December 1, 2025, which CalendarDate.com confirms. Most winter or January clearance sales begin on Boxing Day (December 26) and roll through mid- to late-January, a pattern reflected in Visit London’s guide. Black Friday is always the fourth Friday in November, while Boxing Day has long signalled the start of clearance.

Why shop for fashion on Black Friday?

Accessibility is the straightforward answer. In late November, warehouses brim with goods, size runs are complete, and colours have not yet gone the way of the dodo.

Fashion retailers heavily promote party wear for office and holiday celebrations, branded sneakers, and all the essential basics, often featuring site-wide codes that deduct 20 to 30% from the total.

If you need something specific for December, this is when you’re most likely to find it. The price is where this story becomes convoluted. Which? assessed 227 Black Friday deals in 2024 and found that none were the same price or cheaper at any other point during the year.

Approximately four in ten were cheaper at other times during the year, and about one in ten had already dropped in price in the six months leading up to the event. That changes how you should perceive Black Friday. Think of it as a way to lock in product selection, not as a way to ensure you’re seeing the best price.

Why is January so cheap?

January is more about housekeeping than theatre. After Christmas, retailers urgently need space for spring lines, which means that winter categories have to move, and fast. In this window, coats, boots, and knitwear pick up their steepest reductions, and the kinds of luxury items that were too hot to discount in November finally turn up in clearance.

The official figures say the same thing. The ONS reports that retail sales volumes increased by 1.7% in January 2025 after a drop in December, which looks like classic post-Christmas bargain hunting. The British Retail Consortium reported that shop prices were down 0.7% year on year, with non-food down 1.8%, and cited “extensive January sales” while singling out fashion as one of the heavily reduced categories (BRC/Nielsen IQ).

Consumers anticipate this, and it has an impact on demand. Barclays discovered that shoppers intended to spend roughly £236 each across the Boxing Day and January sales, with the bulk of that spending taking place online. You can peruse the Barclays report and The Independent’s article for more details.

How retailers use the calendar to their advantage

There is no one way to do it. Fast fashion companies run promotions so often that it can feel as though Black Friday is just one banner in a long line of them. Sportswear brands typically save their best offers for last, publishing tidy 20% to 30% off coupons in November and then clearing out slow sellers in January. High street retailers often reserve their deepest discounts for December 26, when they need space in a hurry.

How to Spot a Real Saving

A sharp routine will save you money. Look up the price history for the item you want. Tools like PriceSpy or Keepa show how a price has moved over the last month or two. Compare with last January’s clearance level. This gives you a realistic target before you click buy. Be wary of a conveniently struck-through. Because Which? found six in ten crossed-out “was” prices had not been the going rate for most of the prior year.

Those caveats noted, the weekend remains vast. Adobe Analytics estimated £3.63 billion of UK online spending across Black Friday through Cyber Monday in 2024, up 5.2% year on year. Those figures were reported by Reuters and echoed by Yahoo Finance. Big weekends still move stock, then January clears the rest.

If you need a specific piece for December, shop in November while the size is still there. If you want the lowest likely price on seasonal winterwear, watch for January and the final reductions. A simple way to hold this in your head works well here. Black Friday is for choice, January is for clearance.

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