Tami Visits Frederick’s

Tami’s Adventures in Crossdressing, Part 3

By Tami

In Part 1, I described a bit about myself and how Femulate’s hostess, Stana, and I share some similarities; first and foremost, our love of crossdressing. In Part 2, I related how as a very young boy, I got hooked on crossdressing when I hooked up the clasps of bras and garter belts and donned a wide variety of wondrous female attire owned by my mother and two older sisters.  

After those first young steps in spiky heels, I matured into a typical adolescent American male and turned my attention to the traditional wearers of soft, sensual attire – girls. The pursuit of the so-called fairer sex and a busy life of school, socializing and sports kept me too busy to don anything other than traditional male clothing. I never crossdressed during my high school and college years. 

After college I got married and started having kids. Crossdressing gradually became a distant memory, but I never completely forgot those daring, secret adventures of my youth, especially when I was looking at the feminine version of myself in a full-length mirror in my sisters’ walk-in closet. I never lost the interest in women’s clothing, but I just hadn’t had any opportunity to try anything on and truth be told, I really didn’t think about it much at all.

As a young crossdresser, I didn’t really understand that I was not alone, but then again, I don’t believe I even considered that others did it. I just knew that I did and that was enough. The idea that I was far from alone would have come as a shock to me in those early years.


From reading many of the comments posted on Femulate, I know that there are many among us who followed the same path – we crossdressed as youngsters, grew out of it during adolescence (mostly due to being too “distracted”) and then rediscovered our secret passion of crossdressing as we grew older.

I didn’t slip back into a silky slip until I was in my thirties. I reconnected to this magical, forbidden “hobby” because I witnessed another crossdresser trying on some distinctly feminine items. On a business trip to Los Angeles, I happened to pass by the world famous Frederick’s of Hollywood lingerie emporium on the equally famous Sunset Strip. As I drove slowly past, I observed window after window displaying mannequins adorned in many of the types of items I occasionally got to wear as a young boy: corsets, bustiers, garter belts, stockings, sheer lacy robes, pretty bras and more. I just had to stop and explore those special windows up close.

Many of you reading this surely understand. You probably furtively stole glances into lingerie store windows or were brave enough to just stop and more closely stare at the appealing displays. Every window that day called to me, saying, “look at all these beautiful things, wouldn’t it feel wonderful to wear them all?” I was more than just interested, I just couldn’t stop myself from actually going into this living museum to statin, lace and leather. It was literally my very first venture into any lingerie store and I found it almost overwhelming. The store was big and busy, lots of females were shopping and working there, from the very young to older ladies, along with some couples and as it turned out, I was not the only solo male looking through the amazing racks of finery. 

I felt empowered when a young sales girl said that if I needed help just ask. I replied that I just wanted to browse for something for my wife, so with a big smile she let me do just that. I excitedly pursued rack after rack of sexy panties, garter belts, corsets, bustiers, slips, petticoats and stockings. 

As I was walking around the store, marveling at the wide variety of wondrous unmentionables, I spied a middle-aged male who was doing something shocking; well, at least shocking to me. He was dressed like any typical male, button front collared man-tailored shirt, slacks held up by a leather belt, no discernible jewelry, but a pretty young sales girl was placing a pair of very high stiletto heels on his feet. As she guided him into a pair of beautiful and sexy open-toe high heels, I observed that his toes were sparkling with bright pink polish, which were visible through very sheer stockings. He was also wearing a sparkly ankle bracelet with a pink heart dangling from it. After stepping into the girly shoes, he would walk around to see how they felt, pulling up his trouser legs so he could see the full effect the heels had on his legs. The sales girl would encourage him by saying how pretty the heels looked on him, how they made his legs look long and sexy and suggesting he should try on the next pair to see how they fit. 

This daring young man in the sky-high heels and the sales girl helping him, seemed to have no problem with what they were doing, nor did any of the other shoppers. Anyone in that area of the large store could not help but notice as he tried on a few pairs of pretty high heels and walked back in forth in them, stopping to see how he looked in the mirrors placed at angles on the floor of the shoe area. 



As I sneaked frequent glances towards this man in stockings and heels, it slowly dawned on me that I was not the only one who wore the apparel of the other sex. Not only were there others, but at least some of them, like this shopper in Frederick’s of Hollywood, did it in public unabashedly. 

When I did it as a youngster I did it in secret and never told a soul. I was fearful that anyone might find out and label me a freak. This fellow shopper, the stores’ all-female staff, and the other customers didn’t react like there was anything at all abnormal going on.



That experience turned out to be an enabler for me for future outings. If some other male could boldly try on high heels and expose his stocking clad legs in a busy, crowded store, who was I not to be equally daring? I didn’t immediately do exactly what he did, but believe me, I really wanted to... and more. I imagined trying on whatever was required to hold up a pair of stockings, plus dresses and skirts and blouses and earrings. 

My imagination started to get way ahead of me. I didn’t graduate to trying on girly-girl clothing in stores until years later, but I was already dreaming of it. I so wanted to be like him – to walk into a store while wearing stockings, and other unmentionables under my male outer clothing and being helped by a sales girl to try on every type of feminine finery imaginable. 

What I did that that day instead was to purchase a darling set of dreamy lingerie for my beautiful wife. Even though her own choices of underthings were not so overtly feminine or sexy as those sold in Frederick’s, she obliged my tastes by occasionally wearing what I bought her on that fateful trip. The gift was composed of a matching set of lacy panties, bra, garter belt and silky sheer stockings. Like most women born in the fifties, she had switched from stockings to pantyhose long before this and found the garter-supported stockings to be old-fashioned and less comfortable. She indulged me by wearing the set I bought her on special occasions. 

And so the pink dye was cast, forgotten unmentionables had slipped back into my house and my life and I was obsessed with the idea of myself dressed in items just like them and more. This opened or reopened a chapter that I thought had closed long ago. It took me places I could not have dreamed of as a young budding crossdresser.



In the Part 4, I will tell you the tale of how I gradually re-entered the world of wearing feminine finery, daringly so, and more and more frequently as the years rolled on.

Wearing Shein

Rachel, a Femulate reader and practitioner