Tuesday, October 13, 2009

shopping

(updated below)

I exchanged e-mails with Patty, my de facto fashion consultant, on Friday and she was not too happy with my choice of dress for the formal I will be attending next month. She liked the dress (a Mad Men retro style sheath), but she did not think it was formal enough for a formal.

I agreed and began looking around for something else.

Jessica London
sent me an e-mail that resulted in a 40% discount on one item, so I looked around their Web site and found a dress that both Patty and I thought was perfect for the event. It is a simple black A-line with goldtone beading along the neckline (see photo above). I ordered the dress and await its delivery.

I need shoes to go with the dress, so I checked out the Payless Web site and found some likely candidates. I know my local Payless restocks on Tuesday, so I planned to go there at lunch time to shop.

I am getting wiser in my old age. In anticipation of my Payless visit, I put on a pair of knee-highs and wore them to work under my socks and I took off my socks before I drove to Payless.

I know that Payless has peds in the store, but I dislike having to remove my socks to put on peds in the store if the store is busy. I don't want to attract a lot of attention. Trying on heels is attention-getting enough, but removing socks and putting on the peds just adds more potential attention-getting time, so I came prepared with knee-highs on and socks off. As it turned out, I was the only customer in the store.

Payless had one pair in stock in my size that I liked when I saw it online, a stacked peep-toe slingback (see photo below). I tried it on and it fit perfectly, so I bought it.

Payless is having a buy-one and get-one half-off promotion, but there was no other shoe that I liked that fit. The cashier reminded me of the promotion when I cashed out and I told her that I could not find anything else.

She then informed me that they will be restocking this afternoon and if I bring back my receipt, I can still take advantage of the promotion if I find anything else that I like.

Online, they showed a pair of gold strappy sandals that I thought would go perfect with my dress, so I will go back tomorrow and see what they have.

A local trans Halloween party is in the works for the 29th and I plan to go as a Roaring Twenties flapper. I already have a dress that will do: a gold sequins short-sleeved tunic. All I need is accessories, so after shopping at Payless, I visited the party store next door and purchased everything I needed: a black feathered flapper headpiece, a black garter, a six-foot long black boa, and two long strings of beads.

Woo woo!
UPDATE: I went back to Payless on Wednesday and they had nothing new in the Amazonian sizes I wear.

6 comments:

  1. Have a Blast! I'm sure you will look great!

    Scott

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great choices - both the dress and the shoes. But I'm shocked that you were unable to take advantage of the half price offer. What a disappointment.
    Heloise x

    ReplyDelete
  3. Scott --- Thank you. And I assure you that there will be photographs.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Heloise --- Thank-you. With receipt in hand, I believe they will honor the half-off sale at other Payless stores, so I may stop at another store this evening. (The promotion ends today.)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Locally, in Tampa, Payless is a mixed bag in terms of tolerance, and I'm still learning which stores are more "TV friendly" than the others. For now, I only use the stores for returns of items ordered from the website, and, even then, the store clerks are sometimes visibly unnerved about handling the transaction for me.

    Even stranger, the owner of the new shoe store in town specializing in large sizes for women was open in a recent interview in the paper -- she doesn't like men in her store buying the shoes.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Roscoe --- I guess we live in different worlds! I have shopped for women's shoes in boy mode and girl mode in many Payless stores from New York to Boston and have never had a problem. All the store personnal have been courteous, helpful, and in many cases, downright friendly.

    ReplyDelete