Hilary's heartfelt gift

Hilary Barry's "online shopping fail" has ended in one new mum scoring a designer dress to wear to a wedding.

The TV personality and new host of Seven Sharp told her Facebook followers she accidentally bought the same Kate Spade dress twice so decided to give it away.

"There's no point selling it. I'd rather give one of them away to one of you so we can be twinsies," she wrote.

Barry had more than 5000 people comment on her post after it went up on Friday night and this evening picked a winner.

"I read through every one of them (yes it took a while) and concluded everyone should have a dress!!!! Sadly I'm not Oprah," she said.

She whittled it down to a shortlist of seven but couldn't decided between them so resorted to drawing one out of a bowl.

Genevieve Hearn was the winner and planned to wear the dress to a wedding in a few weeks time.

"Hi Hilary the dress is something I would love to wear," her entry read.

"After having my daughter a year ago I have not bought nothing other than nursing wear. After weaning her I feel my appearance/confidence is a bit deflated and don't have much of a wardrobe to help. I have a wedding to go to in a few weeks and would love to wear something special. This would be perfect."

In true Barry style, the TV journalist couldn't help having a laugh at some of the entries, mentioning one woman who said she'd love to be her "twinkie" rather than "twinsie" and even found a couple of doppelgangers amongst the entrants.

NZ Herald.