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Gold and malachite pendant, $2605, and charm bracelet with malachite, sugillite, tigerseye, $6250

Gucci.com

The fun of browsing for jewelry online

I live three blocks away from a Gucci flagship store.

And yet I spent much of this morning wandering around Gucci’s new Canadian e-commerce site. Previously, Canadians could not have orders delivered to Canadian addresses. Now, we can join Gucci e-shoppers in the U.S., U.K., Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Gucci.com offers a full selection of men’s and women’s ready-to-wear, accessories, shoes, jewelry and timepieces, along with Internet exclusives such as a sterling silver bracelet with interlocking GGs for $550.

Two other bracelets also caught my eye  – a patchwork of blue and green agate slivers ($7,840), and an open loop of yellow gold ending in a gleaming chunk of orange quartz ($4,490).

Runway and advertising videos complement the shopping area. A video aimed at jewelry lovers has a model writhing in a patch of sand caressing various Gucci baubles.

Best of all, I love that Gucci.com remembers my country when I re-enter the site, so all the prices shown are in my currency.

But why am I even bothering to surf when I could see the items live just a five-minute walk away?

I love the anonymity of scoping out the goods online. I can admire a piece and not have the salesperson hear me choke when I learn the price. I can take my time to make a decision without feeling pressured. I can see items my local store might not have in stock. I can study my wardrobe to remind myself what I have that might go with a piece I am considering. And I can “visit” the item online, to see if the yearning waxes or wanes.

What I can’t do is try it on, feel the material, see the scale and how the colours suit my skintone. So ultimately, if at all possible, a trip to a store to make that final decision is ideal.

And I still have trouble with the notion of spending thousands on a piece of jewelry I haven’t held in my hand. But I also couldn’t imagine buying it without doing a little web-window shopping first.