Grumbling about clothes
Jun. 27th, 2007 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lyornI hate shopping for clothes. Everything costs too much, nothing fits well, and the shopgirls are all half-pint sized and make me feel like an elephant. The plus-size store in town takes "plus" into all dimensions -- I'm at least ten centimetres too short for their designs. The hippie/goth store decided years ago that they could make more money in a day at some faire or festival than in six days in town, so off they are and I'm out of a source for the type of clothes I actually like. The "respectable" clothes stores do not fit my style and tend to feminine cuts which do not fit my shape.
I can buy jeans and T-shirts and shirts and sweaters in men's sizes at the jeans stores or department stores, but without the occasional hippie shirt or tie-dyed baggy pants to contrast it, these become drab. Also, at my new job I feel a little uncomfortable with my casual cross-dressing.
Lately I've been ordering from a catalogue which is kind of OK. They have "colourful" and they have it in reasonable sizes and cuts. Only, when in a store I know instantly if I like something and what goes well with it. With mail order stuff it takes me a while to find out - make that weeks or months. Too late to send it back, anyway. So I buy far more stuff than I need or want and become wasteful. Which I hate less viscerally than shopping for clothes, but just as intensely.
Today I got a few new things, and lo and behold, they are all just a tiny bit too large. Only a little, only so much that I think, "I would like to try that one size smaller". Which, of course, I can't. I haven't lost weight. I'm near the low point of my seasonal waxing and waning, but that hardly makes for a whole size, much less two. (The clothes come in double sizes and I used to be closer to the higher one.)
So I thought, "well, maybe they re-adjusted their measurements" (vanity sizing and all that) and visited their webpage to check. To find out that, according to their calculators, I'd need -- four sizes larger. Just brilliant.
So I guess the by now fifteen year old items will stay the stars of my wardrobe, with no hope of ever replacing them. Maybe if I re-dye them they will last another fifteen years.
I want the hippie store back.
I can buy jeans and T-shirts and shirts and sweaters in men's sizes at the jeans stores or department stores, but without the occasional hippie shirt or tie-dyed baggy pants to contrast it, these become drab. Also, at my new job I feel a little uncomfortable with my casual cross-dressing.
Lately I've been ordering from a catalogue which is kind of OK. They have "colourful" and they have it in reasonable sizes and cuts. Only, when in a store I know instantly if I like something and what goes well with it. With mail order stuff it takes me a while to find out - make that weeks or months. Too late to send it back, anyway. So I buy far more stuff than I need or want and become wasteful. Which I hate less viscerally than shopping for clothes, but just as intensely.
Today I got a few new things, and lo and behold, they are all just a tiny bit too large. Only a little, only so much that I think, "I would like to try that one size smaller". Which, of course, I can't. I haven't lost weight. I'm near the low point of my seasonal waxing and waning, but that hardly makes for a whole size, much less two. (The clothes come in double sizes and I used to be closer to the higher one.)
So I thought, "well, maybe they re-adjusted their measurements" (vanity sizing and all that) and visited their webpage to check. To find out that, according to their calculators, I'd need -- four sizes larger. Just brilliant.
So I guess the by now fifteen year old items will stay the stars of my wardrobe, with no hope of ever replacing them. Maybe if I re-dye them they will last another fifteen years.
I want the hippie store back.
