My shopping experience

August 8th, 2009

For the past few years, the weekend before the start of the fall semester has been designated for a Tax-Free holiday, where no sales tax is charged on purchasing made. Some stores have exceptions, putting say $100 limit on the amount one can purchase and still not be charged sales tax. The past 2 years this date has fallen between my pay days and at the beginning of the month, where either I’ve just paid bills or more are due.

This year, thankfully, that isn’t the case, and so I decided to scope the commercial center and see what was available. I’ve slowly been building up my wardrobe from ill-fitting jeans and oversized shirts to better-fitting jeans and cute and well-fitting tops that better express my quirky personality. After losing all that weight, many of my clothes no longer fit. Some items are out of style, but I’ve also been trying to acquire things more appropriate for my age (gah! 27 next b-day, late twenties, OH NOEZ).

I’m a late-bloomer in a lot of things, and finding my style seems to be one of them. What Not To Wear is one of my favorite television shows. Stacy and Clinton provide truly practical tips for dressing to fit “the body you have right now” so that you can look your best at whatever stage of life you’re in. If you’ve gained weight, and you know you’re not going to lose it anytime soon, suck it up and buy and bigger size, because you only look fatter wearing too-small clothes. I know this. Conversely, the same thing works if you lose weight. I’ve never hated shopping, but I guess it’s just a frustrating experience when you don’t actually know what looks good on you, or what you like is too expensive, or OMG, this “dress” is really cute up top, but are they sure this isn’t mislabeled, like, it’s having an identity crisis where it was born a shirt but really wants to be a dress?

However it does pay off to take the time to find things that look nice and actually TRY THINGS ON. I finally figured out what size I actually am, but all designers don’t fit the same, so a cute party dress by Max Izaria in a size 6 (small) fits great, a small sweater from Old Navy it too small.

It’s an insane rush to be this excited about buying clothes for the first time, like, ever in my life. Seriously, when I got to work after my mini-spree, I was all a-twitter to my co-worker, Dave, about the experience. Thankfully, he’s nice enough to humor me. I think he just find my kid-genius antics amusing. Incidentally, if possible, I would marry this online store: ModCloth.com. I tweeted about some of my longings while browsing their selection yesterday.

The point? Oh yes. I was originally going to begin this entry talking about how the store XXI gives me the barely controllable urge to leap from the nearest window whenever I cross its threshold. They do, however, have very cute clothes. And the store is only one story. There’s just SO MUCH STUFF. There’s no discernible (to me, at least) rhyme or reason to how they’ve organized the selection, except that the really dressy stuff is on one room and all the Sale and Clearance stuff crammed on racks and walls in another.

TL;DR version: I bought some really cute clothes. I dress from a boutique called Hourglass and a cream colored sweater and deep blue-green woven shirt from Forever 21.

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In other news, I applied for a job. I hope something comes of it.

Entry Filed under: life,shopping