Sunday, May 18, 2014

Shopping Successes!

I am someone who has a horror of a time finding clothing. A size 6 top and a size 12 bottom make clothing shopping very un-fun. I am the girl who tries on 48 items and leaves with none. So on Friday morning I had one goal. Find a bridesmaid dress for my brothers wedding. Navy. With lace detail. Seemed so much easier on paper than it did in actuality. But I HAD to find a dress. So when I walked into dress shop number 9,546 four months into looking, my hopes were slim.

And so I walked in, told the sales lady what I was looking for (a dress that had to be able to have sleeves made for it without it looking stupid or just added on) and she said "oh, because of this, right?" She knew exactly why, went straight to a specific dress and said this was what I wanted and what would work on me. And 15 minutes later it was bought and paid for. It was THAT easy.

Now the dress does have to be shortened to knee length (easy fix) and they are going to use that fabric to make a sleeve. It will be a fitted sleeve just below the elbow and we ordered an extra bit of lace so we can trim/cuff the sleeve. Dress - DONE!


Excited by my final success (my brother and sister in law were actually in town this weekend and it was approved by the bride), I ran quickly to the mall to pick up a birthday gift for my brother. And I see in the front of a small store a round circle filled with dresses that are marked down on clearance and think "What the hell. I'll try".  Half the dresses had sleeves (I don't wear sleeveless items) and they were all REALLY reduced. Like more than half off. I grabbed about 15 different styles hoping one of them would work. I had a Friday night dinner, Saturday morning function at a synagogue and a Saturday night function all that weekend and had yet to find/dig something out of my closet for ANY of them. I figured if I found at least one it would be nice. So I try the first one on - this one:



And it fit me perfectly. THE FIRST DRESS? Twice in one day? I was going to stop and try to not push my luck but I tried on the rest. And about 8 fit. 4 of them in total had sleeves. I have so many dresses that are sleeveless and I just finally wanted some that I didn't have to worry about putting cardigans or blazers over. So I grabbed all 4 that had sleeves and as I was about to walk out of the fitting room, the sales associate mentioned that they were an ADDITIONAL 30% off. I ALMOST grabbed the other 4. BUT............ I have spent the last few years trying very hard to stick to a shopping philosophy. If I didn't love it enough/want it enough to buy it when it was full price, I don't need it at 90% off. Yes, there are times when I can't afford something at full price ( like my Ralph Lauren wool skirt that I fell in love with at a whopping $980) and then I will stalk it until it is in my price range (14 months literally till that $980 skirt became $125) but the general rule is if I don't love it at $250, I don't need it at $25.

So I stuck to it, grabbing the above one and these 3 also - for a total final bill of $110! For FOUR dresses that all were in the $100 range to start with.







I wore three of the four dresses this past weekend. But the highlight of the day was not finding dresses. It was finally being able to not feel like a freak. When you try on every dress in a store (something I have done time and time again) and none of them fit, you start to take that personally. It's not trying them on and not LIKING any of them, its them all literally not fitting. And when that happens over and over and over again you can't help but internalize that. It's easy to sound like Stacey London or Clinton Kelly and say its the clothes and not you, but really, the common denominator in the story is ME.

Hope all of you are having a good long weekend! I took Thursday off instead of Monday, so its back to work tomorrow for me!

Ciao all!

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