A Fashion Rant
Feb. 5th, 2008 08:09 pmI had a dentist appointment this afternoon so took advantage of being sort of in the area to stop in at Tyson's Corner Center afterwards. For those unfamiliar with it, this is a large, moderately up-scale shopping mall. It's less ritzy than Tyson's Galleria down the block, but a step up from most of the rest of what there is in Northern Virginia.
My real purposes in going there were to pick up some check register pages at the Franklin Covey store and to get the roll of film I shot in Fiji developed. (I take a lot of digital pictures, but film has its uses, too.) And those chores were accomplished. But I also browsed the stores.
Background here is that I wear roughly a size 18. Could be 16, could be 20 depending on style and manufacturer. Regardless, this is usually somewhere in the plus-size department. And said departments are full of perfectly decent sportswear - jeans, casual tops, jackets and so on. They have plenty of dressy dresses. But in 5 stores I went into (3 department stores, Lane Bryant and Talbot Woman) there were exactly 2 dresses that could be worn by an adult woman to a professional job. Both of those were at Talbot Woman and both of them were in colors I don't wear.
I am flattered that, say, Macy's thinks I have such an interesting social life that I need all that sparkle and glitz. But I have a job so I can pay for that glittering social life and I need nice suits or dresses to wear to that job and, yes, maybe a pantsuit or two is okay but skirts have really not gone the way of the farthingdale (whatever that was).
All I want is a couple of long sleeve shirt-waist dresses and maybe a new tweedy skirt suit (or A-line skirt with blazer). This should not be so bloody hard.
And, by the way, Nordstrom's appears to have stopped selling their nice comfy cotton pajamas. Or at least hidden them so well in the lingerie department as to be equivalent.
My real purposes in going there were to pick up some check register pages at the Franklin Covey store and to get the roll of film I shot in Fiji developed. (I take a lot of digital pictures, but film has its uses, too.) And those chores were accomplished. But I also browsed the stores.
Background here is that I wear roughly a size 18. Could be 16, could be 20 depending on style and manufacturer. Regardless, this is usually somewhere in the plus-size department. And said departments are full of perfectly decent sportswear - jeans, casual tops, jackets and so on. They have plenty of dressy dresses. But in 5 stores I went into (3 department stores, Lane Bryant and Talbot Woman) there were exactly 2 dresses that could be worn by an adult woman to a professional job. Both of those were at Talbot Woman and both of them were in colors I don't wear.
I am flattered that, say, Macy's thinks I have such an interesting social life that I need all that sparkle and glitz. But I have a job so I can pay for that glittering social life and I need nice suits or dresses to wear to that job and, yes, maybe a pantsuit or two is okay but skirts have really not gone the way of the farthingdale (whatever that was).
All I want is a couple of long sleeve shirt-waist dresses and maybe a new tweedy skirt suit (or A-line skirt with blazer). This should not be so bloody hard.
And, by the way, Nordstrom's appears to have stopped selling their nice comfy cotton pajamas. Or at least hidden them so well in the lingerie department as to be equivalent.