I Still Loathe Clothes Shopping

Some of you may recall that I'm not a big fan of clothes shopping. Well, I think I’m beginning to discover yet another reason I so hate it. I’ve always blamed it on the mall. The mall is really the best bet if you’re looking for a wide selection from which to choose, but I get exhausted just saying the word. I can’t imagine thinking of it as a great place to waste a Sunday afternoon, as so many Americans seem to do (and as I once did when I was a teenager and a twenty-something). You might as well suggest to me that for fun, let’s go sit in a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV (actually, I prefer the hospital bed. I could read all afternoon and have someone bring me food). Top that with the fact I can never find anything that looks as good on me as it does on that size 0 mannequin.

Speaking of sizes, there’s that whole size factor that really irks me, too. I wish I could just go somewhere and know exactly what size I am. I used to sort of have an idea, but then everything switched on me. When I started wearing women’s sizes, around age fourteen or so, I was a size six, at least in regular stores. If (for some very strange reason, because I paid for all my own clothes when I was a teenager and didn’t have that kind of money. Maybe my grandmother took me to one or something) I went to some upscale boutique, where they want to make their customers feel good about themselves (read “skinnier than they are”), or something, I might be a size four. No one had anything smaller than a size four. Four was it, and fours in most places were way too small for me. My biggest problem when it came to size in those days was finding a pair of pants that didn’t need hemming (nearly impossible. Still nearly impossible, because I’m this odd height in which “petite” is too short, and everything else needs to be hemmed so much a whole new pair of pants can be made from the cut-off material).

At this point in my life, I weigh about fifteen pounds more than I did back then. I’ve never been what anyone would call fat (although like all female teenagers, at the time, I thought my butt was too big. How anyone who doesn’t even weigh 110 pounds can think her butt is too big, is beyond me, but teenaged girls are not known for being the most practical and rational people). Let’s take a look at what size I wear today: your guess is as good as mine. First of all, we’ve introduced the aforementioned size “zero.” Size zero: the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. You mean you’re no size whatsoever? Do you even exist? And the only person I’ve ever seen who could possibly wear a size zero is maybe Keith Richards. No one with hip bones could squeeze into something like that; yet they don’t appear to be made for eight-year-old girls, unless ten-inch-heels or maybe stilts are now all the rage for eight-year-old girls. Size two, another size I never saw when I was a teenager, maybe makes a little more sense, although I can’t tell the difference between a size two and a size zero when I see them side-by-side. I weigh fifteen pounds more than I once did, and yet size four, which never used to fit me, seems to be the size that most often fits me these days. I used to be a “small” t-shirt. Now, having gained weight, I’m an “extra small.” That is, depending on what store I’m in. In some places, I’ve become a “medium,” just like in some places I might be a six or even an eight, and that “upscale boutique” theory doesn’t work anymore. I can find myself wearing a four at K-Mart and a six at Saks Fifth Avenue. I can even find myself buying one K-Mart skirt in size four and one in size six. But I’m truly digressing here (obviously, this size thing is extremely annoying, if I can waste two paragraphs on it), because what I want to do is talk about my newest discovery.

Last year, on a shopping trip with my mother and sisters (the only time I like to go shopping is with my mother and sisters, because my mother has a knack for finding clothes that look great on me, and because it’s fun and often turns into a hilarious adventure), I was trying on a few things that just looked plain horrible on me (chosen by me, not my mother), and she explained to me that I look best in “classic” clothes. Translate that as “boring, preppy, tweedy.” I joked that, “yes, I look fabulous in a schoolgirl uniform,” but I wasn’t really joking.

The problem is, this isn’t what I want to look fabulous in. I want to look fabulous in “funky.” I want to look fabulous in “cool chic.” I want to look fabulous in “artsy.” I want to wear Indian skirts and crocheted tops and long flowing tunics and short black velvet jackets, and turn heads rather than watching them bounce all over the place, having been laughed off by those catching a glimpse of me in the ridiculous get-ups I’m sporting. And don’t tell me women over the age of thirty can’t dress like that. I’ve known plenty of women in their sixties and seventies who can pull off cool and funky and look stunning (my grandmother was like that), and even when I was eighteen, I couldn’t dress that way and look stunning. Both my sisters can pull off these different looks. It’s not fair. We’re related. Why can’t I? Why did I have to be the one who in order to look good has to look like she walked out of the pages of an L.L. Bean catalog or out of a banker's convention? No wonder I hate shopping! It’s like loving chocolate and suddenly discovering you’re allergic to it. You wouldn’t go hang out with Willy Wonka, then, would you?

So, I’ve spent a whole year in denial. I’ve ignored what my mother said and kept on wearing some of the things I’ve bought over the years that aren’t the least bit classic. I’ve been drawn to street shows in New York and done a tiny bit of shopping there (so much less painful than going to the mall when you know you can get some great, authentic ethnic food nearly every step of the way), but then I found myself in Atlanta, at a hotel that conveniently has some shops attached to it, and I needed some new dress slacks for all this business travel I have to do these days. Better to look for some there than to have to tackle the mall back home. I walked into Brooks Brothers, where I decided I might as well try on a few other things. I didn’t try on a single thing that – well, with the exception of the inevitable hemming – didn’t fit me perfectly (in case you're interested, at Brooks Brothers, I'm a size 4 for tops, 6 for bottoms) and that didn’t look like it was made with me in mind. But then I realized the other reason I don’t like “classic:” I don’t like forking over $200 and walking out of a store with nothing but a shoelace to show for it.

Oh well, though, why fight it? I might as well accept the fact, at age 43, that these are the sorts of clothes I ought to be wearing. “Classics” last forever, right? Anyone have any blue pinstripe pants you’re terribly sick of, having bought them twenty years ago, you’d like to send my way? If they’re that old, I’m probably a size eight. While you’re at it, you can send me your suits and coats and sweaters that are twenty-years-old as well. I just might have a few funky things to give you in return.