(Skirt, Primark; sweater, thrifted; shoes, Kurt Geiger c/o Idealo.co.uk)
Yesterday I got my hair cut and…
HOLD IT! STOP RIGHT THERE, you, with your finger poised upon the red cross at the top right of your browser. Yes, I see you doing that, but don’t worry, this isn’t one of THOSE posts. You know, those posts where I have a really bad haircut, and then I whine about it, and you all tut-tut and shake your heads and say We told you so, Amber, why you never listen? (In pidgin English apparently. Huh.) and I’m all I know, I know, but this time I have truly learned my lesson!, but you all know I haven’t, and you’re right, because I never do.
No, it’s not one of THOSE posts. This time. Actually, the haircut was fine. But That Thing happened again. It always does. It happens anywhere I’m forced to make small-talk with people I don’t know, actually, but as I don’t get out much, that means it happens most often at the salon. It goes like this:
STYLIST: So! Off work today are we?
[Thinks: getting her hair done in the middle of the day, wearing an outfit which would in no way be appropriate for a nice, respectable office job: bitch is either out of work, or on a day off. Hope it's the latter, or I'm not getting a tip!]
ME: [Thinks: Oh God, here we go... It's That Thing again, dammit!]
Um, no, actually, I work from home! Am self-employed! Can leave house any time I like, go me!
[Thinks: Why also speaking pidgin English, why?]
STYLIST: Oh, really? What is it that you do?
ME: [I wish I was dead now.] I’m a, er, well, it’s like, I’m one of those…
STYLIST: [Oh God, is hooker!]
ME: I’m a BLOGGER.
STYLIST: ???????
ME: I BLOG.For a living. Also, I wish I was dead. Not for a living, though. Well, kind of.
STYLIST: A booger? That’s a job?
ME: BLAWG. ER. I have blawgs. I mean, blogs. On the Internets.
STYLIST: [The hell?]
[Lengthy pause.]
So! Off anywhere nice on holiday this year?
This happens every single time I meet someone new. Or rather, it DID. You see, after the first few times, I got wise to it. I came to realise that while I live, eat, and breathe blogging, to most of the rest of the world it’s still quite a new, and really totally weird, thing. I realised this after the one-millionth conversation with my mum in which she said, “I met So-and-So today. She asked what you were up to these days, so I told her you were a blogger, and then I had to spend twenty minutes explaining what that was. She still didn’t understand, though. Next time, I think I’ll just say you’re dead.”*
(That last bit was a joke, by the way. Parents very supportive of blogging career. Also totally reading this. In fact, right now, my mum’s turning from her screen to shout, “John! She’s making us look bad on the Internet again! Do you want to phone her this time?”)
(That was also a joke. Mostly.)
Once I realised that people in the Real World aren’t really ready for the concept of blogging for a living, I decided there was no point in mentioning it. So now I just say something like, “I have an online publishing company,” (which is technically true, but always makes me sound like a bit of an asshole) or, more often, “I run a bunch of websites”. Both of these answers have exactly the same conversation-stopping abilities as “I’m a blogger,” though. Not once has anyone ever followed up with “What do you write about?” or anything like that (Well, other than my dentist, but I had my mouth full at the time, so I couldn’t really answer him properly. He still thinks I’m a “dogger”, which is, like, a TOTALLY different thing…): instead, their eyes just take on a glazed look, and I can almost see the cogs in their brains turning as they try to come up with a conversational out. “Trust me to get stuck talking to the weirdo in the room!” I sense them thinking. And then I do that thing where I start talking too fast about absolutely nothing at all, in a bid to cover my embarrassment, and… actually, I wonder if this is why no one ever invites me to their parties any more?
I don’t really know why it should be this way. The Internet, after all, is not a new invention. Neither is publishing. But publishing ON THE INTERNET? WHOA, there, sister! Enough of that crazy talk! Ironically, my websites get more visitors per month than many magazines do, but if I were to tell my stylist I ran a magazine, say, she’d probably find that vaguely interesting – or at least know what I was talking about. Saying you’re a blogger, however, still has a bit of a stigma to it, even it’s only the stigma attached to something that is not yet mainstream enough for people to really “get” it.
Honestly, I blame Jude Law. For a lot of things, actually, but seriously, have you seen Contagion?
Anyway, my search for a way to explain what I do for a living without making people recoil in horror continues. Of course, I could just go back to saying “I’m a writer”, but, having done that in the past, I find it makes me sound a lot more interesting than I actually am, and I like to keep people’s expectations of me good and low, so I don’t disappoint them any more than I can help. On second thoughts, maybe I should just stick with “blogger”…
(Dress, Dorothy Perkins (sold out); Shoes, French Connection c/o Spartoo)
Last summer, workmen dramatically tore down the old office building I used to work in, and started building a gigantic Primark in its place. It was kind of like the opposite of paving paradise and putting up a parking lot, although only if your definition of “paradise” involves fighting people to the death for that last polyester skirt in your size. And actually, they DID also put up a parking lot, too, so it wasn’t really like that AT ALL, other than in the sense that ANYTHING would seem like “paradise” after that office block. (I may have to go back and delete that line later.)
Anyway, getting a Primark was a big deal for our town. We only got the round wheel, and, you know, FIRE, a few years ago, so to have a gigantic Primark is something of a coup. We were all, “Haha, Edinburgh, take that! You can keep your poxy castle: we got us a POLYESTER PALACE, by God! And then Edinburgh was all, “Actually, we’re getting one too, AND we have Zara. Also: Anthopologie. And did we mention Harvey Nichols?” and we all felt a bit stupid after that.
Now, as it happens, my idea of paradise doesn’t actually include fighting people over a dress, although don’t think I wouldn’t do it if I had to. But I needed tights. Yes, my old nemesis, tights. And I wanted to get them from Primark, because, well, they’re cheap, and come in 150 denier, which is how I like ‘em.
(Note to all of the people who are about to tell me that I TOTALLY need to try Wolford tights and that even although they cost as much as a small car, I will never look back once I have tried them: NO. There is no way I’m doing that. I just don’t care enough about tights, sorry-I’m-not-sorry. And if it’s a choice between spending £20 on tights and spending £20 on a top, say, I know what I’m buying…)
So I needed tights, and I figured that as I was going to be spending money on something that would give me no pleasure whatsoever, I may as well make the experience even worse by going to this new Primark on the very day it opened. I know, what was I thinking? Because the fact is, I don’t really like people. And most people seem to live in the mall at this time of year. As you know, The Others make it their business to goad and torment me at all times, by getting all up in my face, crowding around me any chance they get, squeezing into tiny spaces of which I am the only other occupant, walking really slowly, and other acts of extreme evil like that.
But I needed tights. So I went, I saw, I shopped. And as we were at the mall, well it would’ve been rude not to have a look round all the other stores, too, wouldn’t it? My mum came with me, because sometimes I need someone to calm me down in these situations, and together we had a rare old time. Here is what I bought:
Yeeeeees. It says quite a lot about me, doesn’t it? I mean, can anyone guess which colours and patterns I like?
I also bought two pairs of trousers. This is why I’m officially giving up on Dressember. (Well, that and the fact that the posts were about as popular as … a really unpopular thing… and without the Internets to motivate me to take photos, I just won’t do it.) I want to wear my trousers, dammit. And also that skirt I just ordered from ASOS. (WITH A GIFT CARD, TERRY.) (Mum: it’s not the one I needed you to alter: you can stand down.) And I think that what I’ve learned from Dressember this time around is that, as much as I love my dresses, I also love my trousers and my skirts. And I don’t really like restricting myself to just one thing: in fact, as soon as you tell me to do that, I will want to do the exact opposite. I’m reminded of how, when I was a child and my parents would tell me I wasn’t to touch that new ornament/gadget/piece of expensive electrical equipment they’d just bought, I would nod solemnly in agreement, and then, the moment they left the room, I would go straight over and TOUCH THAT THING. And I would like it. And only once did I actually break it. (“It” just so happened to be a set of glass shelves containing glass ornaments, mind you, so… that was unfortunate.)
The tl;dr version of this post: I quit Dressember.
And I never did buy those tights…
DRESSEMBER, DAY, 11
Dress, Stop Staring; Shoes, Office, c/o. Idealo.co.uk
Yesterday was the 11th anniversary of my first “date” with Terry. Of course, yesterday was also a work day, so we decided to do our celebrating on Sunday instead, with a meal at a local restaurant and an opportunity for me to be totally overdressed as usual.
If you read Shoeperwoman, you’ll already have seen this dress, and even if you don’t, it’s the one I’m wearing in my Twitter avatar, my Facebook profile, the “About the author” box on this website… basically everywhere I’ve claimed a small piece of the Internet as my own, I’ve worn this dress on it. So I guess you could call it a favourite. You could also call it “That dress my parents bought me because they got sick of standing around in a dress shop while I agonised between it and another one.” Thanks, folks! (Yes, SPOILED.)
Anyway, it doesn’t really matter that you’ve seen the dress before, because this outfit was really all about the shoes:
These are also one of my favourites, and they were also a gift, this time from Idealo.co.uk, who very kindly allowed me to run rampant on their website earlier this year, and chose some products to review. I picked these Office platforms, because although I already had eleventy-one pairs of red shoes at the time (Joking. I only had eight.) if there’s one thing I believe, it’s that you can never have too many pairs of red shoes. Or too many polka dot dresses. Or too many opportunities to wear both of them together, and pose like an idiot in them. Or… oh, you get the picture.
These are actually much more comfortable than they probably look, which is a good thing given how often I wear them. As I’m fond of repeating over at Shoeperwoman, red shoes are more or less a “neutral” for me, because they work with so much of my wardrobe. Well, except for all the green dresses, obviously: if I tried that, people would probably revert back to using my childhood nickname, “Traffic Lights”, and God knows, it took long enough to get them to stop the first time…
Oh, and just to prove that I do still have a head, even although I cropped it out of all of the other photos:
(I was doing a weird, squinty-eyed thing in all of them. In this one, I appear to be either standing on my toes (why?) or am about to levitate. Let’s pretend it’s the second option: it’ll make this post much more interesting…)
Tagged dresses, shoes
DRESSEMBER, Day 7
Dress, ASOS; scarf, H&M; shoes, Kurt Geiger c/o Idealo.co.uk)
So, are you all suitably impressed that I haven’t complained about the weather yet? Even although the OMGSNOW came last week, and on day one, all everyone could talk about was the OMGSNOW, and on day two all everyone could talk about was how all everyone could talk about was the OMGSNOW? And now I’m talking about everyone talking about everyone talking about the OMGSNOW, and so the circle is complete. Although, if you could all now comment about the fact that I’m commenting about the fact that people are commenting about… actually, on second thoughts, let’s not do that, OK?
Anyway, on Day 3, the snow rested, by which I mean, “it melted, THANK YOU GOD.” And honestly, it wasn’t that bad: the fact is, I have no flights or holidays planned which the snow could conceivably ruin, and I think it realised that, so it didn’t linger, and I didn’t complain.
Then this week, the wind came.
Did I mention that I hate the wind? The wind is, like, my second most hated type of weather (Most Hated is snow, obviously, but I think that goes without saying by now), and I hate it because… well, because it messes up my hair, basically. It also managed to wreak complete and utter havoc with everything else, too, though. It was as if the wind thought, “Ha, I’ll show this snow how it’s done!” and then it proceeded to do just that. So by lunchtime yesterday all the schools were closed, our fence had blown down for the fifth year running, there was rubbish all over the street, courtesy of the bins that had blown over, Rubin was barking at his own shadow, and all everyone could talk about was the OMGWIND.
“Let’s go outside and take Dressember photos in the WIND,” I said to Terry. “They will be dramatic, and kinda cool. And even if they’re not, at least they’ll be more interesting than YET ANOTHER PHOTO of me standing in front of my shoes like a rabbit caught in the headlights.”
So, yeah, THAT worked out well:
And the rest were totally unusable. Remember that time my hair tried to kill me? THAT.
As this is Day 8 of Dressember, though (Yes, I know today is the 9th, but these photos are from yesterday), I suppose I better talk about the dress. As you can see, this dress is neither green nor black. Indeed, it is blue, and this particular shade of blue is currently the holder of the prestigious title of “Amber’s Second-Favourite Colour”. (Oh, hi, did I mention I’m still in high school, by the way? “Blue, you can be my second-favourite colour! And green, you are the MOST favourite colour, like, 4 eva!”) This dress is also a Problem Dress (TM). As well as having to have a substantial chunk cut off the bottom (I’m all about the midi skirts, but when it’s “midi” on the model, it’s “midaxi” on me, it has a funny waist. Or rather, I have a funny waist.
I, you see, was cursed with a long torso. (Which is a really weird curse to put on someone, but anyway) This means that the waistlines of most dresses hit just below my ribcage as opposed to on the natural waist, and also means that I can make almost anything look like maternity wear. I generally solve this problem by just belting everything (and this dress particularly needs a belt, because as well as being too high, the waist is kind of ugly), but the belt that came with the dress was cheap and plastic looking (also: lime green, which just so happens to be the only green I DON’T like), and none of the 11,564 belts in my collection were quite right, somehow, so I ended up having to press this H&M scarf into service instead. And then the wind pulled it in all directions, and you can see the waistline anyway, GOD.
However, let the record show that I have dutifully worn a dress for the 8th day in a row. Let it also show that I have now written 700 words about this, which is really too much for a post about a dress, especially a Friday post, which no one will read anyway, so I’ll shut up now.
Have a good weekend, everyone! (And remember, you can find lots more Dressember dresses here, and I bet none of them use ill-fitting scarves as belts, either!)
P.S. For some reason, my blog has decided to mark around 90% of comments as spam, and block them accordingly: it’s even doing it to my replies, so if your comment doesn’t appear, please don’t take it personally – you haven’t been blocked or anything, it’s just the spam filter and until we manage to work out what’s wrong with it, I will keep checking and approving the comments that end up there!
DRESSEMBER, Day 3
Dress, Black Halo ‘Jackie O’ dress, (c/o Shopbop); shoes, River Island
This Saturday was my friend Lindsay’s birthday party, which was being held in a club in Edinburgh.
“I’ll get ready super-early,” I thought. “Then there’ll be no last-minute rush, with Terry sitting outside in the car with the engine running, while I run around the house in my dressing gown and two different shoes. And if my hair turns into a giant frizz-ball, I’ll have time to tame it, rather than having to resort to a last-minute messy bunhead! And I’ll have time to take outfit photos that don’t completely suck! Yes, I will definitely make sure I get ready early!”
Then, having had that thought, what I did was, I sat on my ass all day, drank a lot of coffee, and completely re-built my Sim-self’s house in Sims Social. Time passed astonishingly quickly in this way, and finally, it got to the point where I really HAD to have a shower if there was to be any hope of me having time to do my hair, and make it good n’massive, the way I like it. So what I did THEN was, I built my Sim a swimming pool, and a deck with a hot tub. Then I went to have my shower.
What happened next was very long and traumatic, but I’ll boil it down for you quickly:
Remember the time I left a colour-depositing hair conditioner on for too long and it turned my hair bright orange?
Remember that super-awesome new conditioner I told you about a few weeks ago?
Remember when Geri Halliwell was in the Spice Girls, and she had those two blonde stripes at the front of her head, and the rest of it was red?
THAT. Only, on me, the blonde stripes were my usual colour, and the rest of it was REALLY, REALLY RED. Like, the type of red that does not occur in nature. THAT red.
In other words, yes, I made the same mistake twice. Yes I did.
In my defence, this was a different shade of the conditioner. (REALLY REALLY RED, I think it’s called.) I had used it last week for the first time, and it had made absolutely no difference to my hair colour whatsoever, so I figured it would be safe enough to leave it on for a bit longer this time. Um, even although the instructions specifically tell you not to do that. (I know, I know…) And obviously I didn’t apply it properly either, because, as I said, my fringe was left untouched, while the rest of my head looked like I’d spilled ketchup on it.
“No worries,” I thought, worrying. “It’s a wash-in, wash out colour. It’ll just wash right out!”
The conditioner is supposed to last for three washes. People, I am here to tell you that NO. IT DOESN’T. I stopped counting somewhere around five. And of course, the problem was that I am stupid each time I shampooed it, my wet hair would be too dark to really tell whether I’d got the stuff out or not, so I’d have to start blow-drying it, only to find that whoops, nope, still the colour of a postbox! And then the whole process would have to start again.
I spent what felt like hours hopping in and out of the shower. By the end of it, my hair was like straw (I did put on some deep-conditioner, but by then I didn’t have time to really let it sink in), I was running late, and I STILL had a huge patch of ketchup on the top of my head. So I ended up with a last-minute rush, with Terry having to leave to pick up our friends and drop-off Rubin with my parents, while I rushed around the house in my dressing gown and two different shoes. And actually, I had planned to wear a completely different outfit, but by that point my confidence was shaken, so I went for my fail-safe standby: the little black dress. The dress you reach for when you know that if you don’t reach for something, your husband will probably just march you out of the house in your dressing gown. GOD.
And after all of that? You can’t even see the giant red patch, can you?
(My Sim house looks AMAZING, though, seriously.)
Dress: Pinup Couture ‘Joanie’ dress
Shoes: Next (from last year)
It’s Day One of Dressember, and I’m starting the way I mean to go on: by wearing a green dress. (I should just have renamed my particular challenge “Greendressember”, and been done with it, really, shouldn’t I?) Oh yeah, and by totally cheating. Because while I AM wearing this dress today (or at least, I WILL be, once I, er, get out of my workout clothes.*), these photos were actually taken on Sunday, when I wore it on our little afternoon tea jaunt. I did manage to resist wearing a pair of little white gloves with it, for full “ladylike” effect, but don’t think I didn’t consider it. Maybe next time!
(Yes, I do own a pair of little white dress gloves. Doesn’t everyone?)
And that right there is the reason why Dressmber is going to be more of a challenge this year than I really anticipated. You see, last year when I did this, I went on holiday for two weeks right slap in the middle of the challenge. To a hot place. (Have I mentioned that I like the sun? And hate the winter? Maybe once or twice, or a million times?) And this, of course, meant that I had access to all of my summer dresses as well as my winter ones, and the weather to wear them in. As it turns out, the vast majority of my favourite dresses are summery ones. My aversion to tights (which I am actually wearing in these photos, by the way – my trusty nude fishnets will surely earn their keep this month!) means that I appear to have focused my dress obsession on dresses which are totally impractical, and which I wouldn’t be able to wear this month, even if I hadn’t already packed them all away: go me! So if I do manage to continue with this challenge, there will be repeats. There will be lots of dresses you’ve already seen. And, well, let’s be honest: a helluva lot of them will be GREEN…
(Title lyric: Hello Saferide, Long Lost Penpal)
*(Seriously, why must I be plagued with the curse of honesty-in-blogging? I mean, I could just have told you that these photos were taken RIGHTTHISVERYSECOND, couldn’t I? And then you wouldn’t be picturing me sitting in my ratty workout gear, with my hair scraped back and no makeup on. But I just couldn’t do it. I will do better tomorrow, I promise. Maybe.)
This is what I’ve been wearing lately:
(Skirt, Topshop; turtleneck, Primark; boots, River Island; enormous hair, Amber’s own.)
I mean, not this exact outfit EVERY day, obviously. I don’t have a wardrobe filled with seven identical green pencil skirts and seven identical green turtlenecks, or anything. That would be weird. And also kind of cool. (I do have a lot of pairs of black boots, mind you…) But some variation on this has become my winter uniform: pencil skirt, turtleneck, tall boots, done. Sometimes I’ll go wild and replace the skirt with cropped pants. Living ON THE EDGE, people.
Anyway. This is my uniform, and this is also why I was reluctant to join in with Dressember this year. As those of you who’ve been following me for a whole year (just humour me and pretend you have, OK?) may remember, Dressember is a month-long attempt to bring back “dressy” dressing, with participants encouraged to wear a dress every day for the entire month, and take photographs as “evidence”. It was set up in reaction to something I think of as The Cult of the Casual, whereby people tend to live in jeans or sweatpants, and only get “dressed up” for weddings, or other very formal events: and sometimes not even then.
Of course, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with dressing casually, if that’s what works for you. But for those of us who really love to dress up, the fact that there are so few opportunities to do it these days can be a bit of a drag: and when we DO throw on a dress and a pair of heels, we’re usually met with scornful glances and endless questions about whether we have an interview, and why we’re “all dressed up”. Sometimes it can be hard to overcome that. I got sucked into the cycle of “jeans with everything” a few years ago, and it was really hard to break out of it: not because I didn’t WANT to, but because it’s so unusual to see someone wearing a dress of ANY kind in my town that you can end up feeling really uncomfortable when you do.
But now I wear dresses. Quite often, in fact. And that’s one of the reasons I wasn’t going to take part in Dressember this year: because it’s supposed to be a challenge, and for me it’s not so much a “challenge” as it is “taking photos of what I wear every day and posting them on the Internets,” which isn’t really something I want to do, for various reasons. I really enjoyed Dressember last year, though, mostly because I met some great people through the Facebook group at the centre of it all, so I’ve decided to give it a go this year too, although with a couple of modifications: I won’t be posting photos every day this time, and I will probably also include the occasional skirt, just to have a bit of variety. This is a bit cheaty of me, but they were allowed last year, and like I said: obsessed.
So, who wants to join us? If you do, you’ll find the Facebook group here: there’s no obligation to post photos if you don’t want to, though: you’re more than welcome to just join in however you like!
As for me, here’s one of the reasons I won’t be doing daily photos:
Left to my own devices, they all end up blurry as hell. Or I get a ton of photos that look like this:
With me grinning rigidly at the camera, while thinking, “Why isn’t it working? Why isn’t it working? Why isn’t it working?”
Anyway: Dressember! Who’s in?
Getting Into The Spirit
Edited by Taylor Davies
Thanksgiving is now officially behind us, so it’s time to start looking ahead to the coming holidays and all the fan-fair that comes along with them. From Black Friday shopping to holiday parties to festive DIY projects, there’s a lot of inspiration in this week’s Links a la Mode selections.
Along with all this inspiration, a few of our bloggers tackled some tough issues, from finding the balance between sexy and frumpy dressing in the workplace, vanity sizing, recession dressing and improving your blog posts. I thought these were important and critical to include for this week’s round up, because even as the holiday season gets into full swing, and we’re overcome with twinkling lights, festive parties and sequins galore – the same problems and difficulties we face the rest of the year will be here.
THE IFB WEEKLY ROUNDUP: LINKS À LA MODE: NOVEMBER 25TH
SPONSOR:
Holiday Sale at Shopbop: Rachel Roy, Anya Hindmarch, Rachel Zoe Bags, Coated Denim, Vix, Paige Jeans, Boots, Alexander Wang Purses, Sonia Rykiel, Tory Burch Bags, Vince Tops, Marc Jacobs Bags & Shoes.
PLEASE READ IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO PARTICIPATE
If you would like to submit your link for next week’s Links à la Mode, please register first, then post your links HERE. The HTML code for this week will be found in the Links a la Mode group will be published later today. ~Jennine
This skirt is a UK size 6, which, for the benefit of my transatlantic readers, roughly corresponds to a US size 0:
I say “roughly”. The size charts will normally equate US0 to a UK4 (which is a largely mythical dress size, usually only found in petite ranges, and even then, in such tiny quantities that it’s like finding the Holy Grail, seriously). That may well have been the case at some point in the past, but as someone who shops a lot in both countries, and who also regularly orders online from the US-based Shopbop, (who, in the interests of disclosure, are sponsors of Shoeperwoman and TheFashionPolice) my experience has always been that size 0= UK6. This is why it always annoys me when the UK media bangs on about “size 0″: it leads people who don’t know a lot about sizing differences between countries to believe that this is some terrifyingly-unnatural size which is THREE FULL SIZES smaller than a UK6. It’s not. Seriously.)
But I digress. This skirt is a UK size 6:
That’s Terry wearing it.
(Yes, he IS a good sport, isn’t he? Also, I’m trying to convince him to start a personal style blog: he already knows how to WORK IT, after all.)
THIS IS WHAT YOUR “SIZE ZERO” LOOKS LIKE, UK FASHION MEDIA.
Or at least, it does at La Redoute, which is where I ordered this skirt from last week, along with a bunch of sweaters which would also have fit Terry, but which wouldn’t have been nearly as amusing on him. Sorry, Terry.
(And yes, I double and triple-checked the label and dispatch notice to make sure they’d sent me the correct size, and they had. I guess there’s a chance it could’ve been wrongly labelled in the factory, but I’ve had to send back items in the past for the same reason, so I suspect it’s simply a case of vanity-sizing gone mad.)
What does this tell us? Other than that Terry should totally have a fashion blog, and that green is SO his colour, obviously? Well, it tells us that vanity sizing is OUT. OF. CONTROL. with some brands. It also helps illustrate how totally random clothes sizing is these days. Because if the “Tall” ranges are too short even for a petite woman, and the smallest dress sizes available will fit a 6ft tall MAN, where on earth are people supposed to shop? Not all of us are handy with a sewing machine (or have the time to alter everything, even if we are), and it’s so frustrating to constantly order clothes and find that they’re not just a little bit larger or smaller than you’d expect, but are actually a completely different size altogether. And will fit your husband.
(It also hopefully tells us that some of the skinny-bashing comments I’m forced to read on The Fashion Police every day, telling me that “no one should be that size!” because “It’s not healthy!” are even more misguided than I’ve always thought they were, given that I now have a “size 0″ husband. But perhaps it’s better not to open that particular can of worms…)
Of course, these issues aren’t just confined to the petites: every woman I have ever met seems to struggle to find clothes that fit properly, and while I understand that it’s impossible for brands to please everyone with their sizing, as we’re all so different, just a little bit of consistency would go a long way, I think.
Still, at least Terry gets a new skirt. Every cloud, people, every cloud…
(P.S. I feel I have to point out here that this photo was actually Terry’s idea, as was posting it on the Internets. I ask a lot of that man sometimes, but posing in a skirt for my blawg was a line even I had hesitated to cross!)
(P.P.S. For some reason, WordPress is currently sending about 50% of my comments straight to spam, for no reason whatsoever. I’m releasing them as quickly as I can, but if your comment hasn’t appeared yet, don’t worry, it’s nothing personal: it’s doing it to my own comments, too!)
Tagged dress sizes, Terry
You see this dress, readers?
This dress is from the Topshop Tall collection. Yes, TALL. For women of 5″9 and above.
I am not tall.
In fact, I’m just a smidge under 5″4 (that “smidge” is important, by the way. Not least because it makes me just slightly too tall for the “petite” section, but still too small for the “regulars”. Won’t someone please think of the women who are 5″4!), so when I ordered this, back in the summer, I thought there was absolutely no danger of it being too short. In fact, I was feeling pretty smug, because I felt sure I had stumbled upon The Answer to all of my “too short” dress woes: just shop from the Tall section! Get easy access to dresses which fall just on, or just above the knee, without having to scour the earth from them (or, er, buy them from Bettie Page or Stop Staring, which let’s face it, is what I normally do..)!
This, you see, is an issue which is starting to get on my last nerve. Why must clothing manufacturers assume that every woman in the world wants to either walk around with her ass hanging out, or dress like a nun? Why is there no middle ground? (Other than the aforementioned Bettie Page/SS middle ground, which is an expensive bit of ground, let me tell you.) Why is it that every time I spy a dress I like hanging in a store, I’ll get it into the fitting room, only to discover that if I bought it, I’d have to walk around like a robot, never daring to lean forward or raise my arms even a fraction, lest I show the world my underwear?
This dress is obviously not QUITE that bad. It’s still fairly decent, albeit shorter than I’m really comfortable with, which is why I’ve had it for months, but had to wait until now to actually wear it, because I feel I can only really get away with it with tights. Did I mention how much I HATE wearing tights?
It’s a first world problem, to be sure.
Oh, and just to add to the confusion: Fi also has this dress. It’s roughly the same length on her as it is on me. And Fi is 5″11.
The lesson? There is no rhyme nor reason to hemlines. Most dresses are too short, regardless of what height you happen to be. (Um, except midi-dresses. Those actually ARE all cut for people who are very, very tall. Don’t even get me STARTED on that one…). And if I tell you I’ve had a bright idea regarding ordering clothes from the Tall section? Just ignore me…
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