Tag Archives: clothes shopping

The Ultimate Fashionista – Not Me!

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I guess you’d call me a victim of fashion. Or actually, a victim of no fashion. No fashion sense, at least. Fashion nonsensical, maybe.

I’ve always been this way. Being the second child, I always had hand-me-downs, which is probably why I never learned to pick out my own clothes. Also, my mother chose my clothes, which I was okay with until junior high, when I was mortified to see myself on videotape wearing saddle shoes and anklet socks. Quel faux pas!

It was at about that time that people started taking me in hand and trying to fix me up, sartorially at least. (Apparently, the other kind of fixing up was not even an option until I was properly decked out.) My first fashion consultant was a friend who told me that the main thing I should invest in was a pleated plaid skirt with a large gold safety pin. I did not, and thereby missed my chance to be stylish.

When I did develop my own sense of style, it was based entirely around Banana Republic. Khaki and olive drab were my color palette. I lived for the day each month when the new catalog came out with all its exotic descriptions of the clothes and tidbits of travel writing.

Only once did I ever shop in an actual Banana Republic store, in La Jolla. I hyperventilated, which is something I ordinarily do only when shopping for amber jewelry. I made several purchases and used the leopard print wrapping paper as a background on my bulletin board at work. (A co-worker once brought me an empty Banana Republic bag as a gift. “Won’t she be offended?” someone asked her. “She’ll love it,” Marie replied.  And I did. But I digress.)

Later I learned that Banana Republic had an outlet store about 45 miles from my house. Of course, I had to go. This was before outlet malls became a Thing. The BR outlet was in Erlanger, KY, a few miles from the Cincinnati airport (which is in Kentucky, for some reason). Keeping with either the travel theme or the airport theme, the outlet store was housed in a large, hangar-like warehouse, where I could make a proper expedition of shopping. I was crushed when BR stopped publishing their catalogs and again when they were bought out by The Gap. The outlet store was just no fun anymore.

Still, I wore my khaki and O.D., with occasional accents of camouflage. (This was also before camo became a Thing for anyone other than soldiers and hunters.) My mother, perhaps in atonement for all the hand-me-downs, sewed me spiffy camo vests and scarves. Once she even found some camo flannel and made me a floor-length granny-style camo nightgown, which I adored. (She also made me a forest green cape and Robin Hood hat, which I wore to my college archery classes. But I digress again.)

Another friend took me in hand and tried to eliminate the jungle look from my wardrobe. She introduced me to colors outside the neutral spectrum and accompanied me on shopping trips where she picked out my clothes and dressed me up like a Barbie doll. Well, not like a Barbie, really. I didn’t have the figure for it and my feet aren’t permanently shaped for heels. At least I looked respectable enough for work and dressy enough for social occasions, which for some reason I hardly ever got invited to. When she was no longer able to go shopping with me, she thoughtfully kept me supplied with more hand-me-downs from her own extensive and colorful wardrobe.

Gradually, I developed enough color sense to boss my husband around. (“Let me try on the teal jacket. No, the teal jacket! Not the navy blue! Lady, can you show him which is the teal jacket?” “Of course I can’t wear the knit sweater that I wore to the last business meeting! It’s long-sleeved and it’s August. Oh, and it’s not white; it’s cream. Which goes nicely with the coffee stain on it.”)

Now, of course, I’ve abandoned all attempts at fashion. I work at home in my pajamas and keep a year-round wardrobe of nightwear ranging from sleep shorts to men’s flannel pajamas. I buy them on sale out of season. This nabs me cutesy designs (“Feline Sleepy” “It’s Meow or Never”) and nightshirts that look like hospital johnnies. But no one except my husband sees me anyway, so it hardly matters.

And if I do have to go outside, I’ve developed my own special signature collection of clothing in my own style. I call it “Retro Boho Hobo,” and it suits me fine.

Shopaholics Unite!

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We talk about shopaholics the way we talk about alcoholics – as though it were some sort of addiction, presumably one that can be treated through a 12-step group (though I’ve never actually heard of Shop Anon). Alas, that’s not the case. Those of us who have spending problems largely have to go it alone. Our friends are more likely to enable us than to talk us out of it.

In the past, I’ve had spending sprees that focused on music. I still buy CDs occasionally, despite the fact that most music is now in the form of downloadable mp3’s. I tried to fight my urges by, first, buying CDs secondhand and second, dividing them into columns, or rather, stacks.

There was a previously-owned music shop (the music was previously owned, not the shop) in town called Second Time Around. Way back when, they sold vinyl record albums. My high school friends and I haunted the place and picked up music by our favorite artists. (At the time, we never considered that we were depriving those artists of royalties. Later in life, I was once inspired to send a quarter to an author I knew because I had picked up one of his books in a used bookstore. But I digress.)

I wandered through Second Time Around, picking up everything that caught my eye (or ear) and piling it up in my little basket. Then I would retreat to a window ledge and sort the CDs into different piles: Must Have, Would Be Nice, and Don’t Really Need. I would buy the Must-Have discs and a couple of the Would-Be-Nice ones, but abandon the Don’t-Really-Needs. Using this strategy, I arrived at a total that, while not totally within my budget, missed it by only a little.

This strategy has served me well over the years. Now the baskets are virtual, but I still fill them up with whatever attracts me and delete as needed (or not needed).

Over the past months, though, my overspending has kicked into overdrive and my doorstep has filled up with Amazon and UPS packages. Nowadays, I over-buy items we may need for our trip abroad (planned for the spring), such as power converters, sweaters, scarves, umbrellas, and guidebooks.

The other item I’ve been jonesing for is pajamas. I work at home, at my computer, so pajamas are my daily uniform. I have shelves of pajamas in my office closet and a few more upstairs in my dresser. I have nightdresses, nightshirts, flannel pajama sets, fleece pajama sets, shorty pajama sets for the summer, and a number of pairs of pajama bottoms that I can pair with the nightshirts for in-between weather.

Pajamas are one purchase that works well with the “stack in the basket and weed” strategy. My husband has been helping me curb my spending. He asks helpful things like “Is there enough money in the bank account?” and “Do you need more pajamas?” I explain to him that the pajamas, particularly out-of-season ones, are on sale at really good prices.

One thing that does keep me from buying pajamas with such wild abandon is the shipping prices. If the shipping costs more than the pajamas, I wildly abandon them – though with regret. I suppose I could rack up the total to where I’d get free shipping, but that feels like cheating on my attempted shopping abstinence.

Travel items and pajamas, I tell myself, are not really so bad. I used to have a thing for jewelry. Now that I work at home, I never go to places where I need to wear necklaces or earrings. So, really, I can skip the jewelry and just buy pajamas. Or else found my own Shop Anon group – perhaps with my husband, who has a comparable problem with seed catalogs.

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Plus-Size People’s Problems

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It’s encouraging that, in the name of body positivity, TV ads and shows are now acknowledging plus-size women. They can be seen in clothing ads, beauty and skincare ads (along with senior women), on television and on the internet and other venues. They exercise. They dance, even if they jiggle. They are moms and consumers of every sort of product.

There are still some problems with the representation of fat women. In news stories, they are only shown from the neck down (unless they’re needed as a talking head), making it seem that fat is a shameful thing and that fat people should hide their identities.

Attractive, plus-size clothing is still hard to find. Especially underwear. Above a certain size, for example, it’s difficult to find panties that are any color other than white. Or that are anything but granny-panties. I may be plus-size, but I’d like my underwear to be attractive, at least.

But what about plus-size men? Don’t they deserve a little body positivity too? Fat men don’t appear in commercials, doing anything, unless they’re being shown as a figure of fun. Exercising? They’re sweating profusely and falling off the stationary bike, if they are pictured in a gym at all. Dancing? Nope. Since John Goodman is now a talking head (or fingertip), fat men are difficult to find in TV programs and ads.

Plus-size men also have limited apparel choices similar to those of plus-size women. Some clothing stores have a Big and Tall department, but their definition of big and tall leaves a lot to be desired. Again with the underwear. Plus-size underwear is invariably white. And plus-size underwear is about all big men are offered.

For fat men to find clothes that fit them, they must go to special shops that cater to their needs. Some of them even have tailors to make sure that the fit is right, and customers pay a price for that. The selection is larger than at non-specialty shops, but the prices are higher – much higher. Sometimes an adequate selection is not even present and the plus-size man must place a special order rather than buy something off the rack. Fortunately, the stores’ selection includes ties and belts for the large man, something that is available practically nowhere else.

In fact, it was difficult to find a photo to go with this post. I use a stock photo service and their choices were severely limited and confined mostly to the standard images that most people think of when they see fat men. There were large men eating pizza and drinking beer. There were fat men portrayed from the neck down, often with a tape measure circling their girth. There were plus-size men exercising or being defeated by exercising. There were even “standard” sized men pinching a scant inch on their obviously toned bodies. I had to search to find one of a fat man doing a normal activity – reading the paper.

One of the few places where I’ve seen plus-sized men presented as desirable is in the song “Fat Boys” by Uncle Bonsai. Here’s it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHzHhV456pk

(If that link doesn’t work for you, here’s a sample of the lyrics.)

Skinny boys got nothin’
To lean against in bed
Bony arms and shoulders
Only bruise my head.

I just want an overgrown boy
Unconditioned, unrehearsed
Fleshy body waiting for the squeeze
Overweight and overblown boys
Whet my whistle, quench my thirst
Chubby cheeks just drop me to my knees.

I love several men who are overweight, downright fat, or obese even. Does it bother me? Not at all. I also love bald-headed men. (Here’s another link, this one from Christine Lavin, if this one works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sirJa_OltKk.) Men with hairy backs. Men who smoke. Men who flirt (even with other women). Really, the only quality that really attracts me is a mustache or beard. And I’ll give a guy a pass on that if he has all my required attributes above the eyeballs: bright, witty, and creative. Body size and shape have nothing to do with it.

Full disclosure: This is a rewrite of a post I shared four years ago. I thought it was time to refresh it, especially since the problem still exists.