March 18 -- What kind of shopper are you?

@mfladd Agree! I love to make a day of it. Shop, have lunch…shop some more…mmatbe end the day w dinner and a movie

@RiotDemon
Indeed. Fuck all clothes that are for any purpose than being comfortable and efficient.

I am not dressing to get on the best dressed list, or to get anyone’s vote for “an elegant and witty appearance” anytime soon. I just don’t use clothing as that sort of a social language.

Nothing against doing all that, but I would have to have a pretty notable incentive to find it worthwhile.

I am not dressing to get on the best dressed list …

@f00l That explains some of my shirt choices.

@RiotDemon You sound like me, especially wandering in the Dollar Tree. I’m a Mission Shopper for the most part. Usually make a list, get in, get out, but then there are the days I’ll “butterfly” around a store looking for nothing in particular.

I love clothes. I have a LOT of clothing. I also fight the scales all the time. Finally got down to a weight where I was comfortable and proceeded to pare down my wardrobe to one size, saving only a few items that were a size of two larger because I adored them and can make them work. Had some health issues last year which really slowed me down & didn’t pay attention to the scale creeping back up. Now I’m 20lbs heavier than I want to be and my pants are mocking me. I’ll get back to where I want to be eventually, but as I get older my body is fighting to hang on to every ounce.

Try Modcloth.com for dresses. Pricy, yes, but sizes run from XS to 4x. Wait for the sales. Problem for me is I’m tall all over so I need longer shoulder straps, longer waist, longer inseams. There’s also eShakti.com which does custom work for like $7.50 extra charge. The styles are a bit frumpy, but they allow you to customize necklines, sleeves, and length, so I can take a dress and modify it to enhance/hide features. Picked up this dress on sale last summer in chocolate. Had it tailored for length, nipped in at the waist, & added room in the bust. The quality was excellent and customer service is stellar. Well worth the price & 12 day wait on delivery.

@LaVikinga I meant “fuck dresses” because I don’t like them. Appreciate the links though.
My issue is that clothing manufacturers don’t seem to believe that you can be tall and overweight at the same time. When I changed from one pants size to the next, almost all the tall options disappeared. It’s impossible for me to buy jeans online because everything fits so weird. I don’t know how many jeans I’ve tried on and they’re such a relaxed fit in the butt/thigh region that they sag terribly. These aren’t even listed as a relaxed fit. I guess they assume that my butt is a big bubble butt at that size. Women’s shirts are almost always too short, have sleeves that are too short, or they assume you have huge boobs if you’re plus size. I lost a bunch of weight by changing almost everything I ate and working out, and then I started some meds where I gained all the weight I had lost plus more. I’m currently deciding if the pros outweigh the cons.

Don’t even get me started on women’s shoes… Lol

@LaVikinga I see that eshakti does custom jeans. A little out of my price range, but that’s pretty cool.

@RiotDemon It drives me crazy that even within the same brand things fit differently. I also am reasonably tall and while then in tall clothes the sleeve length is good, nothing else fits right. And shoes - so they have half sizes until you get to 9.5 - many stores figure if you wear a 9.5 you can just as easily fit in a 10 but would never figure if you wear a 7.5 it will fit just as well if you put on an 8. And my feet are reasonably narrow and most brands have dropped width choices. As a result going a half size too big is even worse as it is then also way too wide instead of only sort of too wide. Of course shoe size is not consistent either between brands or even within styles/shoe lines within a brand. As a result if I have not tried it on in person I will not buy it online unless previous experience has shown me that this brand has size consistency (and that, unfortunately, changes too as it did recently with a brand of jeans that fit me well and were reasonably priced). Sucks. Especially around here where the low budget lady of the night look is the norm and I don’t dress like that. I have to buy most of my clothes when I visit my mom, 1000 miles away, as clothes around there are not like that (for the most part anyway). Online is frequently too big of a risk and returns are expensive.

@LaVikinga I LOVE that dress… I bet it in chocolate looks smashing on you!

@RiotDemon 11m in shoes, Lucky when I can find pretty shoes but many of them, especially mules & sandals are made for someone with exceptionally thick feet. My feet are the one thing that has always been on the thin side. Well, my feet & my earlobes.)

Lane Bryant used to have tall sizes that were tall all over. Unfortunately, they were overpriced and either came only in black or in hideous patterns. Old Navy is hit or miss, but none of the brick & mortar stores carry anything but standard misses in store. really hard to try on a pair of capri pants when the tapered leg starts tapering waaaaay too early.
Even when I was at my largest I still had an hourglass shape so pants that fit my hips & thighs gapped at the waist.
Once I hit my fighting weight I started buying tapered oxford shirts from menswear stores. I’d watch for sales and snap up the smaller sizes that were usually still there during a close out. Slim at the waist, but enough room so the buttons don’t gap at the boobs. Who cares that the button backwards? I can get the length for my arms PLUS they stay tucked into my jeans when I bend over. Even Walmart has decent men’s dress shirts, and up to 4 years ago their Faded Glory bootcut stretch jeans fit like a dream. They stocked a huge range of sizes/inseams and were under 20 bucks. Those have gone the way of sabre tooth.

@mikibell I was pleased I actually was able to find a dress that fit my hips, waist, and bust for under 50 bucks. Brown is a hit or miss color for me. I look better in clear, jewel tones, or black.

@LaVikinga
Ooooh that dress!

Looks great. I hate wearing stuff like that tho. Makes me wanna go hide.

@f00l I have horrible legs but I no longer care.

The time comes in all our lives where we should own our inner fabulousness. Push it towards the outside. We should wear what makes us comfortable, but do it with style & CONFIDENCE. Channel RuPaul!
Be FABULOUS, Bitches! Own the place you’re in!

@LaVikinga
Dresses like those make me wanna hide, whether I look conventionally photos-ready or not. I was never comfortable in any sort of dress that made other people go “oooh” even at my most model-ready when young.

There’s a “personal presentation” aspect to dresses like those - i have never felt ok doing it. I shy away. Some people are great wearing those sort of dresses with “a great cut and lines”.

To me, you have to kinda “carry off” clothes of that sort, and that’s a skill I don’t have.

@narfcake This is Shopping 101 in my book. Perfect.

@daveinwarsh But, but, don’t you need to touch the tools before you buy them? To see how they feel?

@sammydog01 LOL… Only some tools.
I’ve honestly used almost all tools and own most of them. I also collect ‘vintage’ operational tools.
I’ve worked as a building mechanic for many decades, which involves anything that could break in a building (from a 1940’s rental house to a large commercial bldg to a modern jail).
But, yes. I’d rather check out the tools section than shop for a new shirt.

@Shrdlu

For routine shopping, hardware fascinates me. And stuff I’m trying to learn about grabs me. Other that that, I put off going to the store for as long as possible because it’s at least a mild pita.

Special shopping:
I have to stay away from bookstores. I will try to take the bookstore home with me once I’m there, so I ration the visits. Once I’m in the bookstore, I start to pretend to myself that there’s time to read all those books I want to read, and then surely that amount of unassigned time will magically appear in my life. And more time than that, because there will be more books to come. : )

Antique and vintage store are dangerous, but I am usually more sensible about what will fit in my car and my budget.

Nordstrom’s has been in DFW for decades now, and I’ve never been inside one. People tell me it can be addictive.

N-M seemed a magical place when I was young and thought all luxury was desirable. I knew some kids who could afford to dress from there every day, back when people dressed to go to public school. And the clothing and household items were just so lovely. I always had a few things, bought during Last Call. One year as a teenager I worked on weekends during the holidays as a gift wrapper for N-M. They allowed, in those days, a 30% discount to employees including 30% off sale items, with the consequence that employees spent all their earnings upstairs in the store.

I loved the downtown store in Dallas as a child - Mom would take me for “special events” such as the “Fabulous Fortnights”, as when the entire store was turned over to wonderful items from a specific country. I remember Italy’s Fortnight particularly. I don’t know if they still do those.

The old FW store was wonderful and special and fun to run around in. Then a mall came nearby, and N-M made the huge error of moving into the mall, and suddenly the FW store became simply generic high-end retail. Nobody liked the new store. People talked about how much they disliked it, for years. Once in a while I still hear someone mention how much they miss the “old nice N-M”, and it’s more than 3 decades now maybe?.

The mall store’s still there, I guess the people who shopped regularly at N-M still do. And I know they do a ton of business during the three weeks of the Rodeo, when ranchers and the cattle, horse, and livestock trade show up in barn-dusty boots and jeans to try on designer clothing. Also, when people with a bit of money drive in from W Texas, this is the first location they will hit. It’s a regular stop for many of them. So the FW store was always tuned to the oil and ranching and western taste a bit, and the last time I walked thru, it still had a bit of that feel.

I never really liked any of the mall stores. They just feel like “mall stores”. Since I walk into a mall less than once every 5 years or so unless I’m meeting someone, these stores are not relevant to me.

I haven’t been to N-M in downtown Dallas for decades now. I’m betting I would still like it - that it would feel and smell and carry memory of the N-M of my childhood. But it’s in downtown Dallas, which is a hassle. And what within those walls would fit my life? Very little, unless I take up with the yoga and golf crowd, and the charity crowd (if I could afford that, and if they would even have me, and if I didn’t hate continuing to fail at the social stuff I spent my childhood failing at).

N-M in FW is finally giving up on its horrible mall store (everyone who remembers the old store still hates it) after all these decades. (I haven’t set foot in the FW mall N-M, or in the rest of that mall, in 15 years at least.) N-M is opening a new store sometime this year in the toniest and most-difficult-for-the-unwashed-masses-to-access retail and business area in FW. When they open the place, I will go visit it, and I hope it will have some of the wonderful light and airy charm, and the sense of being full of hidden wonderful surprises everywhere one looked, that I remember from being 8 years old.

I don’t know - the chain is run by corporations, not a family now. But one can hope.

Simple lovely and expensive things no longer mean to me what they did when I was a child - the fantasy promise of a special life, surrounded by loveliness. My Mom believed in this, and I captured a bit of that fantasy from her, back then. Now would I not want such a life in that way, or would only want it now and then. I own too much stuff as it is.

But the memories of thinking there was special magic in objects of exquisite beauty lingers. I found that sense shopping on the square in Santa Fe last summer. It can make for a nice afternoon.

@Shrdlu
PS
The famous Neiman-Marcus His and Her Holiday Catalog gifts - here are some:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jaw-dropping-neiman-marcus-fantasy-gifts_us_56339abee4b0c66bae5c2e7b

https://www.littlethings.com/the-15-most-insanely-expensive-gifts-from-the-neiman-marcus-catalog/

I slightly knew people who got the camels, the Chinese Junk (kept at the FW Boat Club on Eagle Mountain Lake) and the mummy cases. People with a lot of money used to buy them as kinda ultra-expensive gag gifts for family.

I am a total failure at living up to the expectations of my upbringing. : )

@ruouttaurmind