Shopping by Touch

The way an outfit looks is something the wearer does both for themselves and for the people around them who are the ones who will primarily be viewing it.  The way it feels, however, is just for the wearer alone.

One thing I’ve learned from shopping with people far more fashion and value forward than myself, is that what an article of clothing is made from is as important as the way it looks, fits, and falls on your body.

Today I needed a couple of things and was out hunting for them with one of my favorite shopping chaperones.  I have a rule that I don’t allow myself to clothes shop alone.  Going alone leads to me taking a step or two into a store, giving a halfhearted glance around, and then leaving in defeat without ever taking a close look at or trying on a single garment.  I know myself, so I never go unescorted anymore.

Today, I shopped mostly with my fingertips, picking through each rack and searching for a texture that felt like quality, that I knew would feel wonderful against my skin.  Doing so I managed to locate a beautiful bright turquoise summer shirt made from bunny-soft 100% cotton material at Avenue, on sale and two sizes smaller than what I normally wear.  It’s not that I’ve lost much weight recently, it’s just that the numbers (at least in the United States) are almost entirely arbitrary.  It looked big enough so I tried it on, and it fit perfect – meaning for once I bought something that was not too big.

The technique also led to a somewhat frustrating experience at Ross.  I don’t shop often at Ross – the huge racks filled with cartoon colored mumus tend to scare me away, and everything always hanging half onto the floor like an earthquake recently struck makes me kind of sad.  I’m also slightly too impatient to wade through all the bad for that one piece of good they usually have hiding somewhere.

Still, I was there, so I tried out the touch technique.  Time after time my fingers would encounter a lovely piece of fabric, then my eyes would see a pretty color or pattern, so I’d pull the garment out to take a closer look.  And time after time I found that what I had encountered was actually a small size which had been misfiled into the women’s section by an impatient customer who didn’t feel like putting something back in the right place (or an impatient store worker who just didn’t care).

The third time this happened I got angry and frustrated and stopped looking.  All the clothes there cost more or less the same range – but the smaller sizes are made from quality fabrics and the larger ones almost entirely from that disgusting, slippery, fake satin polyester crap without a single organic fiber to be found.

What the heck is up with that?  Don’t get me wrong, I had an overall positive experience today and was totally successful in getting what I needed.  I stayed within my budget and even found something really pretty all on my own while trying on a size I’d normally have run away from.  But seriously, the cheap-crap-fabric-is-for-fat-people thing really, really burns my hide.

That is a beautiful woman, and not even she looks good in this thing.