Shopping

I hate shopping. I don't think it's just because ive never been truly comfortable with my body- how it looks overall and how it's shaped. I've never looked on clothes shopping as a recreational experience. I was also raised to never just walk into a store and buy something retail. My mother only shopped the sales and outlets. For me, that adds greatly to the frustration because the chances of finding what you want in your size goes way down.  I didn't grow up in a place where "going to the mall" was something that was easy or convenient or what teenagers did. We didn't have much of a a clothes-shopping main street either, and besides, I lived entirely in jeans, tees, and dresses made out of bed spreads during my high school and college years.

I have had a couple of useful and memorable trips to the outlets when I started needing grown up clothes. When I was moving to Washington in the mid-nineties, I was also moving from a casual, operational-oriented corporate environment to the status conscious very formal seat of government, at a visibly leadership level in my organization. I was the fattest I'd ever been in my life, and none of my previous work clothes came close to fitting me. My hips were beyond the pale, but even my upper arms had gotten flabby, meaning shirts and blazers were not right.  My mother came to visit, and together we made a trip to the huge outlet centers just across the Wisconsin border. I had been a regular at a Liz Claiborne outlet near where my mother lived, but as I got fatter I was more discontent with what they had.  They had separate clothes for fat ladies, tent-like in either drab or inappropriately loud fabrics. But we scored bit at the large Jones New York outlet. I discovered the way their collections worked - continuous in all their sizing ranges. They had named collections so that all the pieces in the collection would work together in compatible colors and patterns. I could find plus-sized bottoms and petite-sized tops - and even petite-plus sized (ie short) trousers. Starting from scratch, I bought over a thousand dollars worth of clothes that day, and found my mother to be the best and most honest critic one could wish.

After the Big Loss, at the end of last century, I had another great trip and reinforced my love of the colors and styles of Jones New York. Tailored and classic, but with current colors and fabrics. Since then, I've been in more of a maintenance mode, and as my weight crept up over the last five years, I did my best to spent as little money as possible.  The easiest way to do that is to stay out of stores, no hardship for me.

I do like cruising the catalogues. But the ones that make me swoon are all casual, active clothes. Atheleta, Title Nine, LLBean, REI, Patgonia, and Sahalie have lovely and expensive clothing I simply can't justify beyond a few basics. I bought some hiking pants, base layers, and an array of fleeces for my trip to the arctic this summer. Spent my budget and more on it. Still the catalogues come and I drool over the work-out and hanging-out clothes, the patterned t-shirts, yoga clothes for me who has never done yoga, and more and more hoodies.  But fancy or work clothes? Not very interesting to me.

Most days at work, I wear tailored lined trousers (black, navy, grey or brown) in seasonally-adjusted weights of wool gabardine, a cotton or silk t-shirt, and a seasonally weighted jacket. Color comes with the top only. The Internet has been a great boon to me- allowing me to just search, click, and buy. You find out right away if they have your size. For several years, Nordstrom and Lands End both had exactly what I was looking for in trousers, and minutes were spent in keeping me supplied from their web sites. Only one pair of pants I bought then has ever actually worn out, but my sizing has changed so most of them don't fit. And now, those two sites do not carry what I'm looking for.

Lately I haven't been sure what my size is. Not only has my weight gone down, but also my shape has changed.  Plus, there may have been some size inflation on the part of the manufacturers, over the last ten years. So the sizes I'm looking for now seem different than the numbers that seemed to work last time I was this weight. I found one pair of heavy wool trousers in the back of the closet than I had never worn, which fit perfectly and carried me through a couple of months of doldrums. But I've been uncomfortable at work in clothes that are wrong. The seasons are changing, and summer clothes have always been harder than winter for me, because I like tailoring and structure, and very thin wool is hard to find. Plus, I think I've got another size to go down, so I don't want to spend a lot of money. But I've got to get stuff that looks good.

Saturday evening I decided to head to Syms, a barn like place with a real outlet feel. I was on a specific mission: black tailored pants, of which I had NONE that fit. Trousers for women these days often are very low rise, very unflattering and uncomfortable on such a pear-shaped woman as me. (I carry my savings for the coming famine entirely between my knees and my waist.) But the "better" clothes meant for the office are not so low rise. Since I was on the mission, no browsing for me, I headed directly for the petite size 12 rack, and grabbed every pair of black or dark grey trousers there - 8 pair - and tried them all on.  Four pair fit, and the pricing was such I decided "why not?"  Then, the spirit of "why not" seized me, and I cruised the jackets and found matching jackets for two of the pants, in grey tweedy fabrics. The labels that worked for me were not my usual - Anne Klein and Evan Picone. (I don't think I've even seen Evan in twenty years, though that label was a foundation for me when I first started in a corporate environment.)  I was just thinking that maybe I needed some color and heading for the tops when the store closed. A good thing for me, as I overspent my budget. But I got six pieces for under three hundred dollars, and enough to wear for the next several months.

Trying on pants can be very demoralizing. I am still fat, and disproportionately fat in my seat. Yet, I have made visible and tangible progress towards a more balanced body, and that is what pushed me to go ahead and buy. I can't gain any weight back if I'm going to wear these clothes. They are sized to fit me now, but should continue to look good for at least another ten pounds down. Their weight is seasonally appropriate through spring and summer. Today, I'll wear something from this big purchase and hopefully it will keep me feeling good and motivated and mindful of both eating and moving.