A LACE dress for £1.99 on a fashion retail website sold out within minutes, crashing the site.

Of course, it’s a special promotion, a loss leader, to get people onto the website.

Normally, the dress costs £18. But if you missed it, do not despair, you didn’t miss much, and the retailer promises an even cheaper version for a quid is on the way.

Having seen photos of the dress, I wouldn’t wear it if it was free. At £18, in my humble opinion, it’s a massive rip-off.

In a pastel turquoise perfect for the under-twos, it’s the sort of 80% synthetic dress that gives nasty electric shocks when worn with tights, and clings to one’s knickers if copious amounts of fabric conditioner aren’t used in the laundering process.

I can see it making an appearance - all muddy and vomity - in a gutter near you after a Friday night booze-binge.

A recent survey found that most consumers want fashion brands to be more transparent about how their clothes are made, and would pay more if they could be certain they were made ethically.

For all I know, this particular dress may have been made by a jolly seamstress on a minimum wage in shiny happy working conditions, but ultra-cheap fashion tends to be produced at a high human cost.

Ethical trading is improving - slowly. But many fashion retailers are still criticised for their employment practices in places like Bangladesh.

So I can’t help thinking, when £1.99 dresses sell within minutes, that shoppers aren’t stopping to question how they have been produced.

If a nice lady with a clipboard stopped me in the street and asked me if I would pay double for a dress I knew had been produced by someone earning a living wage, of course I’d say yes. And I’d mean it at the time.

In reality, most of us simply can’t afford to say yes. Or worse, we don’t even consider how it’s been made. My only defence is that I tend to buy in second-hand shops and dress agencies because cheap high street fashions don’t fit me very well. But, I never say never.

As much as we want to care about little children working 12 hours for a wage that wouldn’t buy a Starbucks coffee, the fact is that when temptation comes a-knocking, we simply cannot resist a bargain. As long as we are buying, retailers will sell.

We are all hypocrites in this huge global exploitation.