Retail Therapy

This time of year is particularly stressful at school. The end is in sight (10 days and counting), yet it doesn’t seem possible to get done everything I need to between now and then. Somehow I have to do about two months’ worth of work in two weeks. Or so it seems. So when my department meeting ended yesterday much earlier than it typically does, I decided it was time for a little retail therapy.

I don’t love to shop as much as some people might suspect. (I also can’t afford to shop as often as I’d like.) Although on-line shopping has a two-fer quality, a double shot of shopping pleasure—the initial purchase followed by the delivery of the item— sometimes it’s not the cookbook I crave, or the personalized note cards that pick me up. Every once in a while what I need is to go through every piece of clothing on the clearance racks at Lord & Taylor to make me right. I’m a woman on a mission. I won’t throw elbows at my fellow full-figured fashionistas, but I will make multiple trips to the dressing room if that’s what it takes in my quest for the fashion trifecta: fit, function, and price.

My summer wardrobe is my weakest collection, given that I don’t work in the summer and spend most of my time by the pool (while stylish, my pool coordinates don’t count as professional or dress clothes). But this summer I have a few special occasions and dinners out—Deanna (who inspired me, by the way, to learn the difference between wool crepe and wool gabardine and to whom I therefore owe my sense of style in large part) visits at the end of the month, I visit Tam in Seattle at the end of July—for which I felt justified in buying something new. Of course neither of the malls closest to me have L&T as an anchor store, or a Talbots, so I made the pilgrimage yesterday to the Westfarms Mall.

Jackpot!

Huge sale. Helpful sales associate. I got a pair of nice Jones New York cropped pants—slightly wider leg and a bit of a sheen that gives them a dressier look—and a very sharp, black and white cardigan (versatile) as an outfit, (and which will be great with my patent leather peep toe slingbacks), a linen tunic to go with a pair of still unworn pants at home, and a sweater for next winter (how could I not?—it was 20 dollars! Merino wool!) all for less than the original retail price of the pants and cardigan.

Just what the doctor ordered.