SEP 04, 2025
Dear Reader,
Do you like shopping online for clothes? Or would you rather shop in person?
When it comes to clothes I really like the hands on, take the entire store into the dressing room approach. Looking at a model online, or worse, just the outfit with the human removed, never gives the full picture of what it’ll look like on my body. I’m not a model, and they never pick short people to demonstrate clothes anyway.
I don’t need to know how a skirt looks on a five foot nine twenty-something with no hips. I also don’t need to know how it’ll look on a sixty-five year old version of the same woman. I need to know how it’ll look on a 5’3” apple shape with mid-life belly.
Case in point, I ordered two skirts online (the only way I could from this particular store), and neither one is right. One is far too big with enough fabric to cover three of me. The other just doesn’t hang quite right. It doesn’t flatter me, and the fabric is so shear I might as well not be wearing anything at all.
Now I have to pay to return them which feels like I’m being punished for giving them a try in the first place.
Ms. Edwina and I used to spend several quality hours in our favorite clothing store, Soft Surroundings. We had the best girl days in there. After trying on everything in the store I’d emerge with one or two things that actually fit and looked good on me.
Then they were bought and dismantled by Corporate Raiders and now you can only see their clothes online. They are a “catalog only” store.
Bah.
Give me brick and mortar.
Maybe that’s why I’m really leaning into the clothing porn in the current chapter I’m writing. They’ all can do magic, so of course they’re all wearing outfits that literally sparkle with their own personal brand of witchy goodness.
My main girl is wearing a black dress embroidered with autumn leaves that emerge and fall from her skirt every time she moves. She feels like a forest nymph waltzing around in that dress.
While I’ve never felt that good in the dressing room, I come far closer to it there than I do clicking “buy” online.
Until next time,
**Book News**
GaG — Current Word Count: 70,101. This book has been a fifteen thousand words forward, ten thousand words back kind of project.
Chapter Six: Garage Sale Finds
Favorite Line of the Week: “Nothing entices a woman to give up her dreams and ambitions like a baby spoon.”
I still haven’t put away all the washi tape and stickers. They sit there, taunting me, even while I shop for new stickers.