Venting about Clothes Shopping

Yesterday we had a neighborhood dinner party. A Progressive Dinner. The kind where you start at one house for drinks and progress to someone else's house for appetizers then to someone else's for the main course and then dessert. It's a great way to reconnect with your neighbors. Since I am 8 months post delivery, I don't have anything to wear which really means I don't have anything new to wear. I have clothes in my closet but they are old and "pre-baby" oriented. Not that they're maternity wear (although I do have plenty of that), it's just that they are not the "in style" sort of clothes that I want to wear now that I am not trying to get to pregnant or already pregnant. So, all this to say that I need to go the mall to get some clothes. Ideally, I was going to run in and run out with an updated fashionable new outfit possibly with matching shoes. It was going to take me about an hour.

Yeah right. I started at the value clothing at Macy's simply because I haven't been able to find anything more than shorts and tees at Penneys. I grabbed a couple of dresses and headed to the dressing room. First of all, I am not 20. In fact I am not 30. I am not even 35! That's as far as I'll go with that online, but you get the idea. So why can't I find clothes that are stylish but made for someone who is not just out of college and has had 3 children? The new styles are very trendy and as I have said before, I don't want to look trendy. Fashionable, confident, but NOT trendy. Sure, I could pull off the silk giant turquoise circle dress with the yellow beading, but I don't want to! I don't' want to have to "pull off" anything! In contrast, I am not 80 either or 70 or even 60! I am a not a grandmother with my knitting needles. I don't need or want bulky, frumpy old lady clothes. What I want is something that says I am in 2007 but that doesn't say I am trying to be 20 or that I have given up. I just want to look nice.

So, as I make my way through the clothing sections, I finally see a few racks of clothes with clean lines, and elegant and fashionable style for someone my age. I grab some of those items and run to the dressing room. Finally, well-made clothing that fits like it is supposed to. I try on a lightweight sweater and skirt that I think are going to be fine for the evening. The price of the sweater is $80! The skirt is $179. Over $200 for one outfit?! NO WAY! I checked it twice just to be certain. I look at all the clothes I brought in from that section and they are all that way. Very pricey! I'm not cheap, but I can't pay $260 for one evening's clothes. So I put everything back and head out of Macys. I go to a couple of other stores but don't see anything like what I am looking for. I decide to go Dillards in hopes that they will have more "mature" clothing than some of the other stores. (I really hate calling it "mature" because that is usually synonymous with frumpy but what do you call clothing for my age group?) I look around a little and find a section of clothing that has exactly what I am looking for. Unfortunately it is in the Ralph Lauren and Jones New York section. I have already been shopping for almost 2 hours and haven't found anything. My window for shopping is closing very quickly so I decide to try on a few items to see if there is anything for me that I can get into fast. Within the first minute, I have about 5 outfits to try. The sales lady comes over and actually takes the clothes I am holding and gets me a dressing room. The room is made of dark red stained wood and there is a button to push if I need her to come back and get me a different size. Ah, the perks of money.

I find the perfect outfit and decide for the sake of time and effort to just get the outfit. I am not going to say how much I spent. But it wasn't a value outfit. In fact, I really can't believe how much I spent to find something simple and nice to wear. I ended up with a white light weight tank sweater over stylish capris. The tank was rather low-cut but I couldn't find anything anywhere that wasn't! The style these days is cleavage - no matter what age you are. I had just read in MORE magazine about how cleavage is in but I didn't really understand exactly just how much cleavage is in until I couldn't find anything that didn't show mine! I asked KingRob if the outfit showed too much and he didn't think so. (haha like he would) I was a little self conscious until I got to the party and saw that every single gal there had on some sort of cleavage baring outfit! I fit right in. In fact, my top was very conservative compared to some of the others. So it all worked out.

I guess I just needed to write about the lack of inexpensive, realistic, fashionable clothing options for women my age. And on that note, I have to add that several years ago I bought a Jones New York sweater that I still wear every year and it still is "in". So I think I got my money out of that one. I am hoping the clothes I bought yesterday will last me for many years as well. I won't be able to afford anything for a long time, so they have to!

When I got home I complained to KingRob about the problems I had shopping and he actually said "Can't you just go to the Gap"? I turned around and showed him my backside and asked him if he had ever seen a rear end that looked like mine in a Gap commercial. We had a good laugh about that. It's a good thing I can laugh about that. It just goes to show you, though, that if the people who are closest to you don't understand what I need in clothes, who can?

Until next time...