Like
all people who have better things to do than to shop for clothes, I do not like to
shop for clothes. I won’t go so far as to
say that I hate it. Hate is a strong and
personal word and should be used for the right thing. Hate is for racism, violence that is not in
self-defense, and capri pants. Time is
precious, although I admit other people get a lot more done in a day than I
do. They vaccinate children, fix things,
teach people to read, rescue animals, volunteer at places that sound helpful,
etc. I just get up and go to a job. But I love my clothes. And I don't shop for them.
Online
shopping for clothes is high on the list of pointless and frustrating services
that modern life has given us. Ads wriggle
around the margins of websites. An image
of a beautiful coat, a pair of boots, or a dress that I have the misguided
belief would suit me, prompts me to take the bait and click. Not one of these virtual sartorial honeytraps
has ever taken me to the garment that flirted with me. Moreover, the garment is sometimes “no longer
available.” The Internet is a global
marketplace. The Internet knows
things. The Internet knows that I am
American. Do not show an American a
product that she cannot have. Do not
do this. Do you know what she will
do to you? She will scorn you, condemn
you, tell everyone and your mother what a terrible retailer you are. She will post, tweet, flame, troll, warn strangers
on trains to avoid you always and forever.
She will end you.
The
other problem with shopping for clothes online is that it is hard to find out
who sells what because the names of the sites don’t mean anything. Time was when clothing stores were named
after the people who owned the store. Nobody
thought much of this in the mid-Holocene, but there was a Mr. Neiman and a Mr.
Marcus; a Mr. Jordan and a Mr. Marsh; a Mr. Bonwit and a Mr. Teller; a Messrs.
Brooks. The places that sold clothing
for people were named for people. There
was a certain transitive property at play.
You would not go into a store called, “Kaybee Toys” and ask to see Halston’s
fall collection. Online clothing
retailers have names that are made up words – I refuse to find out if there is
such a thing as a zulily – and offer no point of reference. One should not be expected to apply intuition
to this enterprise. One should not have
to click to find out if the retailer sells clothes, organic cat food, or intimate
medical supplies. And it should not be
the case that all of these are real possibilities.
The
first way not to shop for clothes is not to shop online. Stop it right away. Do not
shop online until they make the ads link to the clothes they advertise – yes, they
actually have to be told this – and that they name the stores things that make
sense, like Clothes ‘R’ Us, or The Clothes Depot.
The second
thing to avoid is all retail stores, even the ones that are named after
people. You must avoid them because,
while the online retailer is tracking your clicks, the brick and mortar
retailer is actually watching you. If they
get to watch you undress without learning your name, buying you a drink, or
forgetting your birthday, then you should not have to pay for anything you try
on. It should all be free. Moreover, the people who are “monitoring” the
dressing room are judging you. I know
this because I know what I would be doing if this was my job, and I am a fairly
nice person. If the dressing room had an
intercom, I would interject with the customer.
“Ma’am, don’t buy that shirt. It does not matter that you think it’s
cute. If you are over the age of eleven
and not Picasso, do not wear boatneck shirts with horizontal stripes.”
And if
there was no intercom in place, I would knock on the dressing room door and
tell the customer personally. I would be
fired from this job in half an hour.
Next, avoid consignment stores and thrift stores. True, these are more ecologically sound choices:
whatever planet-destroying manufacturing process/supply chain that made the
garment has done its damage. However,
these garments have psychic encumbrances.
The people who possessed these clothes either gained a great deal of
weight, lost a great of weight, stole the garments from their ex-wife, or
died. There are certain kinds of
karma that dry cleaning cannot remove. And
also, the second-hand market still requires you to shop. The purpose of this essay is to learn how not
to shop for clothes.
Do not
bother to entertain the notion of making your own clothes. Haberdashery is a craft and an art and not
something to take up as a hobby, unless the “casually tossed together flour
sack” is a good look for you.
Here is
how not to shop for clothes: Make
Friends and keep them forever. Cherish
your Friends, especially the busy people who wear your size. Busy people have figured out ways not to shop
for clothes that you do not even know exist.
And it doesn’t matter. Because
you have them. No, you are not going to for
ask their advice. You are going to take
their clothes. Their Time is precious,
too. And you know what Friends do for
each other? Friends help Friends Swedish
death clean when they are seized by the frenzy to declutter their lives. Friends help Friends pack when they move. Friends help Friends lighten their closet of
fine garments.
You
need not adhere to the gender binary.
Women don’t need to be told this.
Women like men’s dress clothes because the quality of the fabric is better,
the stitching is stronger, and there are more pockets. You might be prepared to cry sexism over the
integrity of men’s clothes and the flimsiness of women’s clothes, but I suspect
this evolved from Ye Olde Days when heterosexual men did not shop and their
mothers or wives gave them clothes for Christmas and their birthdays. The clothes had to last through the turning
seasons; otherwise, men would go around looking like raggedy extras from Spartacus. Now men shop for themselves and go around looking
like really tall toddlers. This is not
an improvement.
Men: make
friends with women and wear their clothes.
Ease into it. Don’t be shy to
accept a black cashmere sweater, or a generously-cut shirt. Get wild and learn how to operate buttons
again. The snake-hipped among you might
slip on a pencil skirt. Try it out. The world might be a better place if men wore
skirts. And don’t start with the
kilts. Kilts are not skirts. A skirt should make you feel like a walking sausage. A kilt is a hall pass from pants and
underwear. Actually, the world might be
a better place if all of us wore kilts.
(Exception to the rule of this essay: if you must shop for clothes, buy
kilts.)
You are at the mercy of another’s taste, which is why it is advisable to have a
few friends with good taste to stock up on the basics, but don’t limit
yourself. Stay in the good graces of a fashion-forward
friend who will put you in things that you would never try on in those evil dressing
rooms with those judgmental security guards.
Your Friend will throw things at you and say: Here are some lovely pieces and yes, I know, you think hoods
look cultish, but you rock this like a hurricane. I would join your sex cult, or death cult, or
sex and death cult. Seriously, you look
like the cult leader. Oh, have a few bolero
jackets. I have seventy. When did I buy these? Was it during our amphetamine phase? When did we last take amphetamines
together? It was not this morning… wait,
what? Is that why you are vacuuming the
drapes? Oooh! Take this!
I have to move to Madagascar for business next Tuesday. It’s a conservative office and the Helen
Mirren Excalibur Disco Witch look won’t fly. But it looks good on you.
“But it
looks good on you” might mean “it looks good on you,” or it might mean “if you
are any Friend to me at all, you will get this out of my damn house now.” Maybe you aren’t brave enough to wear the crushed
velvet catsuit to Thanksgiving dinner, even though your Friend double dog dared
you. And you might get a few wears out
of the dresses Friend acquired during that unfortunate Downton Abbey phase that
you have been forbidden to speak of ever again.
And maybe you will have to make an exception to the ban on horizontal
striped boat necked shirts because your Friend ignored you when you shouted through
the dressing room door to stop this madness.
Accept
all that your Friends give. Accept all
of the good and bad decisions, the fads, the solid basic pieces that everyone
has and no one especially loves, the things that belonged to Friends of Friends. Accept it all. Your closet will be a record of the weird and wonderful
people you have in your life. Go ahead
and pair the harem pants with the tartan jacket. The tuxedo shirt with the Daisy Dukes. The Gunne Sax dress with combat boots. Wear it and rock it. Rock it like a hurricane.
