Women't Aren't Buying Clothes This Holiday Season
And I know exactly why.
The Times published an article today saying that the sale of women's clothing is down 6% over this time last year. They blamed it on housing prices, the economy, and the "sameness" in the stores. That's not the half of it.
I went shopping at Ann Taylor a couple weeks ago for slacks and tops, aka "dress pants." My new gig doesn't allow jeans and I'm not slogging through the snow in my nice skirts. Most of the tops I saw were Christmas red, white or black. There were very few blues and there were a few hideous hounds tooth checks that would make Elle Macpherson look like an ugly sofa.
But Ann Taylor should be truly ashamed of the pants. For starters, the buttons are sewn on badly. Even though they fit me fairly loosely in the waist, the buttons are already coming off, less than a month later. There is way too much fabric in the legs, both length and width-wise. I did find a 'petite' pair that doesn't wrap around my feet when not cuffed, but I'm not quite short enough for the petite cut. And at 5'6" I am too short for the normal ones. I wonder what Amazons (besides my sister who is made entirely out of legs) would fit into the "L" size.
But worst of all, these freaking pants have no pockets. Or rather they have very tiny little back pockets that are too small for much more than a credit card. And there are no front pockets.
This brought on the giantest WTF the first time I needed to run around my building. I'm supposed to have this Treo with me wherever I go, and there's nowhere to put it. Plus I need my ID to get back into my office and these diminutive pockets just aren't cutting it. These pants are SO sexist. Men's dress pants have plenty of room for a wallet, and a phone, but I'm supposed to carry a f*cking purse downstairs to get a cup of coffee.
Needless to say I was not running back to Ann Taylor to buy some leg-fatmaking, tiny pocketed pants. So, to all your women's retailers out there, I give you the big "Duh!" Of course your sales are down. Your clothes are ugly, boring and impractical.
The Times published an article today saying that the sale of women's clothing is down 6% over this time last year. They blamed it on housing prices, the economy, and the "sameness" in the stores. That's not the half of it.
I went shopping at Ann Taylor a couple weeks ago for slacks and tops, aka "dress pants." My new gig doesn't allow jeans and I'm not slogging through the snow in my nice skirts. Most of the tops I saw were Christmas red, white or black. There were very few blues and there were a few hideous hounds tooth checks that would make Elle Macpherson look like an ugly sofa.
But Ann Taylor should be truly ashamed of the pants. For starters, the buttons are sewn on badly. Even though they fit me fairly loosely in the waist, the buttons are already coming off, less than a month later. There is way too much fabric in the legs, both length and width-wise. I did find a 'petite' pair that doesn't wrap around my feet when not cuffed, but I'm not quite short enough for the petite cut. And at 5'6" I am too short for the normal ones. I wonder what Amazons (besides my sister who is made entirely out of legs) would fit into the "L" size.
But worst of all, these freaking pants have no pockets. Or rather they have very tiny little back pockets that are too small for much more than a credit card. And there are no front pockets.
This brought on the giantest WTF the first time I needed to run around my building. I'm supposed to have this Treo with me wherever I go, and there's nowhere to put it. Plus I need my ID to get back into my office and these diminutive pockets just aren't cutting it. These pants are SO sexist. Men's dress pants have plenty of room for a wallet, and a phone, but I'm supposed to carry a f*cking purse downstairs to get a cup of coffee.
Needless to say I was not running back to Ann Taylor to buy some leg-fatmaking, tiny pocketed pants. So, to all your women's retailers out there, I give you the big "Duh!" Of course your sales are down. Your clothes are ugly, boring and impractical.
posted by Margaret at 4:58 PM
1 Comments:
AMEN SISTER! Not to mention the fact that women's clothing sizes only have meaning on some other planet than the one we live on. Last summer, I was looking for a dress for a friend's wedding. I tried on a size 12 in one store, and it looked like I had been wedged into it with a shoehorn. In the next store, I tried on a size 10 and it looked like a tent maker had tailored it for me -- I ended up fitting into a size 4. Yes, that's not a typo -- a size FOUR. How can a size 12 in one store fit like a sausage casing and a size 4 in another store fit perfectly on the same body on the same day within an hour of each other??
And forget buying women's jeans, even from the Levi's folks. Men's jeans are sized by their measurements -- waist and inseam. I walked into a Levi's shop the other day and found what looked like a random series of letters and numbers, and absolutely no explanation anywhere of what they meant. I'm guessing that the '8' meant a size 8, but the letters were meaningless. And you can tell from my comments above how much meaning I attribute to the '8'...
I've given up buying slacks anywhere other than online after walking an entire mall without finding one pair of slacks that I would consider wearing and didn't think would disintegrate the first time I washed them. Lands End and L.L.Bean, at least, seem to care about their quality, and if I stick with the chinos, they generally have reasonable pockets. Though it's been harder and harder to find chinos on Lands End's site -- I'm hoping they manage to free themselves up from Sears at some point so they get back to what they used to be before they got bought out...
Faith
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