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ellarienAs far as I remember, I haven't been to the mall since before Christmas, but today seemed to be a good chance to go hunting something new for the summer. So my walk along the riverbank had an ulterior motive; once I got to the bus-station by the mall I tucked the camera away under my jacket and became a shopper.
Robinsons May did not have the lingerie item I was after. (A quick google solved that problem, once I got home.) Having established that, I set off in quest of dresses.
My requirements are simple enough; washable dresses, suitable for wear to the office and in 100-degree temperatures, with sleeves, mid-calf or longer skirts that can be walked in, and reasonably decent round necklines. Rayon-pretending-to-be-cotton, cotton and linen are acceptable; polyester and rayon-pretending-to-be-silk are hopeless. I gave up on pockets years ago; that's one reason why I wear lightweight jackets even on the hottest summer days. The intersection between my requirements and what's available in my size usually means that I don't have to agonize too much over colours and fabric patterns. Today was no exception. I usually do best at Sears, so I went there first even though they're at the far end of the mall from where I come in. It turned out they had nothing remotely useful this time; I'm sorry, but three layers of diaphanous polyester do not constitute practical wear in the Tucson summer, however pretty the colours. In J. C. Penney, I found a couple of candidates, two-pieces with short-sleeved tops over sleeveless dresses. One turned out to be several inches too short, barely below the knee, but the other wasn't too bad. So I took that one; it doesn't excite me much, and it has distressingly long slits in both sides of the skirt, but it'll do over a slip.
Overheard comments from other women browsing the racks confirmed my complete lack of fashion-awareness. One pulled out a dress that I had barely glanced at on grounds of hopelessly impractical fabric and remarked that it was 'old-fashioned' because it tied in the front, while another, indistinguishable to me at that distance, was 'cute'. Another (white-haired) agreed with me on the impracticality of dry-clean-only but gushed over the cuteness of an over-top with an open back seam, which I found merely silly.
On my way back through the mall I noticed a new coffee place, Gloria Jean's, a franchise I've never run across before. They look a lot like Starbucks, but sensibly call their sizes 'small', 'regular' and 'large'. I treated myself to an iced mocha, which was a welcome refreshment after the walk and the shopping, though for future reference a small one would probably have been sufficient.
Robinsons May did not have the lingerie item I was after. (A quick google solved that problem, once I got home.) Having established that, I set off in quest of dresses.
My requirements are simple enough; washable dresses, suitable for wear to the office and in 100-degree temperatures, with sleeves, mid-calf or longer skirts that can be walked in, and reasonably decent round necklines. Rayon-pretending-to-be-cotton, cotton and linen are acceptable; polyester and rayon-pretending-to-be-silk are hopeless. I gave up on pockets years ago; that's one reason why I wear lightweight jackets even on the hottest summer days. The intersection between my requirements and what's available in my size usually means that I don't have to agonize too much over colours and fabric patterns. Today was no exception. I usually do best at Sears, so I went there first even though they're at the far end of the mall from where I come in. It turned out they had nothing remotely useful this time; I'm sorry, but three layers of diaphanous polyester do not constitute practical wear in the Tucson summer, however pretty the colours. In J. C. Penney, I found a couple of candidates, two-pieces with short-sleeved tops over sleeveless dresses. One turned out to be several inches too short, barely below the knee, but the other wasn't too bad. So I took that one; it doesn't excite me much, and it has distressingly long slits in both sides of the skirt, but it'll do over a slip.
Overheard comments from other women browsing the racks confirmed my complete lack of fashion-awareness. One pulled out a dress that I had barely glanced at on grounds of hopelessly impractical fabric and remarked that it was 'old-fashioned' because it tied in the front, while another, indistinguishable to me at that distance, was 'cute'. Another (white-haired) agreed with me on the impracticality of dry-clean-only but gushed over the cuteness of an over-top with an open back seam, which I found merely silly.
On my way back through the mall I noticed a new coffee place, Gloria Jean's, a franchise I've never run across before. They look a lot like Starbucks, but sensibly call their sizes 'small', 'regular' and 'large'. I treated myself to an iced mocha, which was a welcome refreshment after the walk and the shopping, though for future reference a small one would probably have been sufficient.
