Alternate title: Isn’t it about time for another women’s clothing rant?
I’m going to a wedding next weekend and society dictates that I must not wear
a) jeans and a t-shirt
b) a bathrobe
c) my birthday suit.
So I had to go out and buy a dress. I hate dress-buying because for as long as I can remember I’ve had big hips and a small chest. Plus I’m short. They don’t make dresses for us big-butted short girls.
My first stop was Marshall Field’s. I found about 7 or 8 dresses that I liked (one of which I looooooooved), but none fit. They were all too tight on the ass and too huge in the boobs (I wish I could call them gazongas but I think that word implies actual boob existence). I tried on smaller sizes, I tried on bigger sizes. Nothing fit!
So I went to Nieman Marcus, Banana Republic, and Lord & Taylor. I didn’t even look at the price tags–I just wanted to see if there was something that might not look terrible on me. There wasn’t. Everything sagged on top and pulled on bottom and I got these wrinkles all around my middle from the fabric holding on for dear life.
After a while this gets pretty frustrating.
I was about to give up and just wear a dress that a friend had said looked like “an Italian ice cream shop.”
But then I decided to go to Nordstrom in a last-ditch effort. I found a dress that was slightly reminiscent of that Marilyn Monroe dress where she’s standing over the vent thing. It didn’t look terrible, and at that point I was willing to settle for anything. So I got it and went home.
So I’m really pissed that dress shopping is such a pain in the ass. When I’m rich, I’ll get all of my clothes tailored to my exact dimensions. <sigh>
P.S. If I remember, and if anyone’s interested, I’ll post some pictures of myself after the wedding.
They don’t make dresses for big-butted tall girls, either. I don’t know who they make them for - girls with no curves at all, maybe?
While we’re ranting about clothing, can I talk about pants for a few minutes? You’d think with all the different brands and cuts out there, I could find a pair of slacks that don’t wrinkle up on the sides. Ha, ha, and hah-hah. If such a pair exists, I haven’t found them at any of the stories in the two malls here in town.
I feel your pain. I am a rather curvy person, both upstairs and downstairs, and not long ago I had to buy a dress for a friend’s wedding.
Now I actually don’t mind dresses, but why are all the formal ones either a) black (which I still feel weird wearing to weddings), b) old=lady Mother of the Bride type dresses. and/or c) made with cute little spaghetti straps?
Now I have nothing against spaghetti straps; au contraire, I am envious of those women who can carry them off. But I need architecture, dammit! If I wear spaghetti straps, I look like a cheap hooker.
Suggestions? Hmmmm…I didn’t have much more luck than you did, and eventually ended up with a black dress. Helpful architectural details include knit fabrics, wrap fronts, and back ties, but it’s rare to find any of those things in a formal-ish dress.
I suppose you could always wear a sari - one size fits all. Check out Devon Avenue! If nothing else, you can have a great time, see some mind-blowingly gorgeous fabrics, do some funky grocery shopping, and drown your sorrows in some killer Indian food.
My problem is almost the opposite. I am a fat lady, but bigger on top than on the bottom. (18 top, 14 middle, 12 bottom). All the dresses I find to fit my bust have enough material on the bottom to wrap around at least twice. I always thought the fat-lady clothes were designed for a cone shaped figure, and my cone is upside down. I end up usually trying to find really nice blouse and skirt combos, with an elastic waistband. Add a fancy vest, and it works for everything short of white tie formal.
Yeah, I was looking for a fairly formal dress (I was a bridesmaid but we didn’t have official bridesmaid dresses) and everything was spaghetti straps or strapless. I have the opposite problem, not enough up top to pull off strapless. Plus, I have big muscular shoulders and I look like a linebacker in strapless or little skinny straps. And my waist isn’t that large but my posterior is “nicely shaped” so shift dresses just make me look chunky. I finally found a dress that wasn’t strapless and was knit at a clearence outlet. I think there’s a very few women who look good in strapless and they’re all 17.
One of my best friends is built much the same way, with a small top and a voluptuous bottom (and gorgeous, by the way). She’s had some luck with skirts and blouses for formal occasions. That way you can buy a bottom that fits your bottom, and a top that fits your top.
It’d be better if there were dresses out there that fit, but at least it beats a bathrobe.
I feel your pain. I have what is called today a “ghetto booty.” This means that any dress I buy will be several inches shorter in the back than in the front and it makes me foam at the mouth and want to scream because somehow clothing manufacturers only want to give tiered skirts (where the effect is masked) to little girls!
Sob. I’m okay, really, just perturbed at my lack of selection in clothes.
I don’t understand. You went to Nordstrom’s and got a dress that didn’t fit right? And they wouldn’t alter it for you? My experience with that store is that if an adjustment can be made they will do it for free.
The first suit I ever bought there, when I tried it on it was not only a little too long, but although it fit in the posterior was a bit loose in the waist. It was tailored to fit, no charge, and I had it in a week.
I didn’t realize they would do free alterations. When I was in Nordstrom, I was in the junior’s section or whatever, and it was packed with customers, but the employees were very sparse. I might not have asked for an alteration even if I had known they did that.
Ladies, the solution is there; you’re missing it. Two-piece outfits. And they’re generally sold as separate units, so you can buy a top that fits and a bottom that fits as separate purchases. And it’s been my experience that most such outfits are generally more attractive than dresses, which fall into a few categories: (1) “I’m 35 but want to look like I’m 16”; (2) “I want to be mistaken for a seductive temptress on the lookout for CIA agents to charm government secrets out of”; (3) “I was wearing this plain dress when there was an explosion in the floral-wallpaper shop I was walking by – honest”; and (4) Basic Black – as in “I don’t have a thing I’d be caught in the shower wearing except this basic black dress.”
Two piece outfits have been mentioned. I’m afraid the ladies didn’t miss it, but it appears you did in your effort to quickly post and educate us in the 4 points of dress buying. And gosh, it looks like you nailed those too
Absolutely they will. Even now, if you were to contact them and tell them you got this outfit and realized after you got it home that it needs a tuck here & there they will still do it. I once brought back a pair of slacks that I’d had for a couple years, and I had (temporarily, alas) lost weight. They took it in a full size. No problem.
If you got poor service in Nordstrom’s I am now very afraid. Hell is probably freezing over as we speak, and the world is coming to an end. If you relayed this fact to the customer service dept. they will probably go all woozy and give you a coupon or something. Heck, I once wrote to Macy’s, the home of bad service, and complained and got a card good for $25 off (which I gave away, but still…).
What about separates? Mix and match tops and bottoms-especially in evening wear is pretty popular now, and you get more use out of it.
That said, I feel your pain, as I am somewhat curvy and short, at least by manufactoring standards. Jeans especially are a pain-I’m a size 11 petite. I can always find 11 long, and 11 regular, but almost NEVER 11 petite! The petites I find I can just barely pull over my hips, with about two feet of denim past my toes.
Guin–how about floodies? They might fit you like real pants. God knows I can practically wear floodies as real pants.
I would have considered separates, but I didn’t see any. Or at least any that I liked. I saw a couple, but they either looked too formal (lots of sequins and tulle) or too slutty. I also looked at skirts at Banana Republic, but didn’t see any I liked.
Maybe I just didn’t look in enough places, or maybe I have very discriminating taste.
Slight hijack: You mention jeans… honestly the best fitting jeans I have found are with Victoria’s Secret. I have friends different shapes and sizes who have tried them and liked them a lot. I’m only 5’ tall so I understand the lack of petite!
If you need to find a dress, look for something that laces up the back (it’s possible to find them in a non-prom style; difficult, but possible), or a wrap-front dress. Either of these can be adjusted to suit those of us with little missiles. I feel your pain, though. I don’t necessarily have ghetto booty, but I definitely have booty. Meanwhile, I’m a size 12 on top. Girl’s 12. As in 12 years old. Ouch.
I don’t know who the manufacturer’s use as models, but I suspect that these models are not native to the planet Earth. I can’t explain it any better than that. I used to work in a women’s clothing store, and some designers had a very definite idea of what women should be shaped like. One guy, who the buyer loved, thought that all women had very large breasts, and would design all his dresses for women who must wear GG bras. (For reference, I’d say that about 75% of all women above the age of 16 wear a B, C, D, or DD cup.) His designs were gorgeous, but very, very few women could wear them. Other designers seemed to think that women have no curves, or no more curves than a 12 year old boy. Since this was a large sized women’s shop, those designs didn’t sell very well, either. ALL manufacturers operated on the basis of “if she’s big, she must be tall, too” and the pants lengths were wonderful for those women who were 5’11’ or taller.
But shopping woes are not confined to large women. When my daughter was a child and then a teenager, I constantly had problems finding clothes that didn’t make her look like a child prostitute. Fortunately, she didn’t WANT to look like one, so I didn’t have to fight her AND look for reasonable clothes for her, I just had to look for the clothes. To make matters worse, she’s been pretty curvy since she was 12 or so, and it’s hard to find nice attractive clothes for her. She can’t wear spaghetti straps or tank tops without having her gazongas bounce all over the place. While I am sure that any hetero adult male would enjoy the show, it DOES make her self-concious. She needs to wear a real bra whenever she goes out in public.
