In Which I Buy A Sweater (Harder Than It Sounds Dept.)

Last week Zappos.com offered me a $100 gift certificate to try their new clothing shopping "experience", and, after thinking about for a while (Pro: I like shopping online in general, and the Zappos interface in particular; Con: will it damage my Walter-Cronkite-like credibility to take free stuff to write about a shopping site?) I decided that sure, I'd give it a shot.

Honestly, after about an hour of browsing, I almost wrote back and said "thanks but no thanks" -- let's just say my taste in clothing and what was available on Zappos didn't have a lot of overlap. (Which is odd, because I can find a pair of shoes I desperately want on Zappos merely by clicking randomly on any page ...) There are a lot of very trendy clothes on Zappos, which would be a huge selling point for anyone whose fashion sense didn't crystalize roughly twenty years before they were actually born.

I thought for a while about this sweater (also gray, highly rated, and heaven knows I love cardigans) but I haven't been impressed by Three Dots stuff before, so I didn't hit 'buy' on that one.

This morning, though, I realized that I had never replaced my favorite "cozy for around the house, but nice enough to wear out to the post office" gray hooded sweater that got eaten up by SOMETHING (I refuse to countenance the possibility of MOTHS) winter before last. All last winter I tried to find a replacement, but my heart wasn't in it. But now I'm ready to move on.

Finding a gray hooded sweater on Zappos was really easy -- there's a nice drill-down interface, so you don't have to sort through too many irrelevant options. (It did take me a minute to figure out how to filter just for women's clothing, but only a minute.) The *huge*, well-lit, all-angles photos were great, too.

I wish there were actual garment measurements (or, if there were, that I could find them), but looking at the general cut of the clothes on the site (narrow, narrow, and narrower) induced me to order the Large (and Zappos has free shipping both ways, so it's not like making the wrong size choice is gonna cost me another $8.90 in postage).

The price points were a bit towards what I consider the "higher end" (this sweater was $104! Which I would not otherwise spend without a subsidy of at least $50); about the same as a mid-level department store, like Macy's.

Finding a sweater that had a kangaroo pocket was a bonus. I love kangaroo pockets. So cozy ...

In short: Zappos has a lot of clothing-type stuff, mostly geared (as far as I could tell) towards juniors/young misses. (Which is smart on their part, that's who spends a lot of money on clothes!) Their search system is clever and easy to use, which won't surprise anyone who has ever looked for shoes on the site. I would definitely use it again if I were looking for something in particular (like, say, a gray hooded sweater) ... I'm not much for just browsing, though, so I don't know if I'd go to their site just to hang around. I think it will improve as they add more vendors; I would much rather shop at Zappos than on most crappy, Flash-heavy, badly-organized boutique/manufacturers' sites ...

If I had to suggest a feature, I'd love something where I could ask to be notified when something came in that they didn't have any current listings for, like a red short-sleeved cardigan or a kimono-sleeved cardigan, or a way to suggest categories ...

Thus endeth the review. In other retail news, Little Hunting Creek is having a sale this week: ten percent off everything (to make room for holiday merchandise) through October 5 at midnight. The discount code is LHC10.

Pink Dots For Tea

I am oddly entranced with this Pink Dot Tea Dress which I found on the sale section of the Boden site (I went there last night to look for v-neck cardigans, which are on my "want" list for fall ... and got distracted by the on-sale stuff). It's only available in limited sizes, and only in pink, but ... it's cute! Click on the tiny image to visit their site and see a zoomable picture.

Boden calls this a Spotty Tea Dress, but that makes me think of less-pleasant things, so I will just call it a Pink Dot Tea Dress, if that's all right with y'all. Not that I don't spot myself with tea on a regular basis (drinking iced tea all day long as I do, and not being the most graceful of persons). And occasionally I'll spot other people to an iced tea. And more often than I like I break out in what the Brits call 'spots'. But I don't think I want a dress to remind me of that.

I've had generally good experiences with Boden; I have a printed twill coat of theirs which is one of my favorite things, ever. I haven't bought a dress from them yet, though, mostly because I really, really don't want to buy things without pockets. But if you don't have that odd compulsion, maybe this dress is for you? (Or you could try this one, which does have pockets -- but is only in smaller sizes.)

Post-fundraising drabble #5

She'll pull us both out, and lay us next to each other, and we think "Is this it? Are we going to be made?" We try to look tractable, reasonable, pretty. We try to look as if we'll get along. It's harder on the poor fabric than it is on me—if I get made once and it turns out badly, there's always a chance she'll blame the fabric, or fiddle with the fit, and try again. But once a piece of fabric is cut, there's no second chance. They're hardly ever recut into something else, at least in this house.

[Thanks to Jen at MOMSPatterns for the image ... and she's having a HUGE clearance sale to clear out some patterns before the end of the year! The sale is EXCLUSIVELY for her mailing list and people who read this blog and will last just one week, so hurry on over and grab yourself her best ones! Use coupon code 'merry25' and you'll save 25% off of any sized order! The sale will start the moment you read this and end at the stroke of midnight EST on New Year's DAY.]

Let's see, what else? Oh, THE WIKI IS OVER 3000! I won't give out the prizes until January, though, so keep on loading ... you guys rock.

I'll dole out the red-dress prizes after New Year's, too ...

And I had (completely unrelated to dresses) a piece in the Boston Globe yesterday, all about Christmas superstitions. I hope you and yours who celebrate have a lovely day (and that those who don't celebrate Christmas have a nice quiet day to do with as they please)!

If you have a sewing resolution for the next year, why not leave it in the comments? And then maybe next week sometime I will do a big roundup post about them. Mine is "Take the time to do things right the first time." We'll see how that works. See you all in 2008 ...

If you're a size XS ...

... then this dress, in this color, is on sale for $49 at JCrew. (Click on the image to visit the webpage.)




If you're not an XS, this dress probably won't work for you, although it is also available in L (but only in black and 'bright poppy'). (But if you're not an XS, those pesky breasts might get in the way.) But if you're small on top/small all over, this dress is so incredibly cute. It's cotton-rayon. No pockets, of course, but I'm pretending I didn't see that. Worn with a different-colored tank top underneath, of course. I'd do turquoise, or yellow, and definitely add a chunky mid-length necklace.

There's this color, too, also for the XSs among us:



I have to admit to a love-hate relationship with JCrew. They have so much cute stuff, in so many gorgeous colors (even if they are called froofy names like 'fir' and 'aubergine') and nearly all of it seems geared toward that clenched-jaw Katherine Hepburn phenotype: tall, narrow, angular. Not surprising, given their prepster-chic stylings, but disappointing to those of us not nearly so jawbone-and-elbow-y. Sadly, I haven't bought anything from them in years that got more than a cursory wearing. Yet still I look!

It's almost Labor Day, time to think about holiday parties

Since the fashion cycle has gotten so wonky, and since the advent of air-conditioning, and because of who-knows-how-many other reasons, quite a lot of dresses that no one in their right minds would wear in July are now sold then. Which means that by Labor Day, they are all on sale.

Take this one for instance, at Bloomingdale's, in a small range of sizes (although that range includes 24W!) going now for $69-79. It's all silk, and it's quite elegant. And yes, it also comes in black. (Click on the image to visit the catalog page.)

This is a perfect holiday-party dress for those of us who think bare arms and shoulders in December is a great way to catch a cold, and/or folks who hate managing a drippy shawl, or who just want to look a little more covered-up. It's so rare to find a holiday-party dress that's not bare and still looks witty and dashing and elegant -- something that is the female equivalent of the tuxedo, in fact, which I suppose is why this one works!

I think I would wear this with huge cloisonne beads or very large cloisonne cuffs, and high heels -- as high as I could manage. Maybe black patent heels with a very square heel and a round (or at least not very pointy) toe, so they would look like men's classic tuxedo pumps, and a black patent clutch. And red lipstick. Definitely red lipstick.

I would NOT wear it with a pin or brooch that featured any of the following: Christmas trees, Santa, candy canes, holly, blinking lights (especially not blinking lights that were intended to represent, say, a reindeer's NOSE), or the words "Ho Ho Ho." There's festive, and then there's festooned. There's a difference.