By Stephanie Stoughton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 22, 1998; Page H5

Catalogue retailer Lands' End Inc. gave me wardrobe advice plus a place where I could "virtually" try on outfits using a three-dimensional model of my body. Eddie Bauer Inc. allowed me to mix and match clothing online. And Gap Inc. let me compare clothing swatches on the computer screen before picking a color.

Ultimately, their goal is to make sure I don't mistakenly buy a pair of high-water pants or garish hot-pink sweater and then send it back – also a curse of catalogue retailers, which share high return rates.

But I didn't care about their motives, because I liked the idea that these three retailers had figured out a way to use new technologies to solve one of my biggest problems with shopping online: There's no dressing room. And I appreciate that they had peppered their sites with special discounts, easy search devices and other goodies.

On its Web site (www. landsend.com), Lands' End set up a special clearance center where it continually discounts prices on clothing, shoes and other merchandise – bit by bit – until everything is sold. Eddie Bauer (www. eddiebauer.com), offered sales on out-of-season clothing at its site. And Gap (www.gap.com) has a discount rack in a corner of its cyberstore.

All three retailers made it simple to find specific types of clothing, as well as to get help. And Gap took the extra step of telephoning me after I tried to get a package delivered to my office – a common ruse by criminals using stolen credit cards. A company representative politely explained that she was checking me out. Similarly, I had ordered merchandise from three other companies, including Eddie Bauer. They did not call me.

The list of services offered goes on. Lands' End offered to remind me of special birthdays, anniversaries and other times to shop. It promised to keep track of my address book and remember the names of all my cousins.

Shortly after Thanksgiving, it plans to introduce a service allowing shoppers to input information about a relative or friend – such as a taste for golf – and then the company will analyze and choose the gift.

The thought of Lands' End having personal information about my family members and friends was slightly frightening. But then again, I'll never again have to listen to my mother singing "Happy birthday to me" because I was late with the gift.

Department store chains seem to be having an awful time making sense of the Internet. At the Bloomingdale's Web site (www. bloomingdales.com), I was subjected to blinking icons, tiny type and frustrating searches. A search for "dress shirts" ended up pulling up several different types of cuff links – enough to cause me to hang up on one of my favorite department stores.

Even better-designed Web apparel sites had their problems. At Lands' End, I was frustrated by the delay in its dressing-room service, called "Your Personal Model." And at Eddie Bauer, I twiddled my thumbs for several seconds while my computer slowly brought a picture of a skirt into my vision. I felt like I was in a store where I had to wait to look at each item on the clothing rack.