Rich Eye for the Poor Guy

I wish that the less-expensive brands that still look decent didn't plaster logos and brands on their stuff as badly as the major brands. I don't need a sweatshirts that has "Old Navy" spelled out in block letters on the front. That's lame.

You may as well have it say "Eighteen Dollars!"

And this Halloween thing wasn't one of those situations where you throw on a costume. It was, in fact, this.

wearing way too expensive clothes to a donation-driven Halloween house seems really, really stupid to me, but what do I know? Why spend more on an outfit than you're willing to donate? Is there something I'm totally missing here?

?

The difference is that you're unlikely to spend $200 at Target, unless you're buying an entire wardrobe, so the analogy doesn't work.

Without wearables, Ann, you'd be naked. Do define?

And the smell... and the lights... and the grabby people... and having to take off all your clothes and shoes in a tiny cabinet ju fuck I have to work. Speaking of which shopping is work that costs you money.

Ever? Cumulatively? Hm.

The issue is affordability - "Fall Fashion: please forget your rent." So the amount of clothing purchased should remain constant. One shirt is still one shirt, from Saks or H&M (which looked very cool on last night's Queer Eye). $200 v. $15. That you might, eventually, purchase 14 shirts at Target for $210 doesn't make Target less affordable.

You're telling me everybody NEEDS all the stuff they were talking about on that thread? That they're actually going to wear those clothes till they fall off their backs? Maybe I just don't have a proper horror of being seen in things twice... then again, maybe I'd rather wear a really nice, warm, comfy cashmere 20 times than have a different pile o gear every time I go out... maybe I'm not really a girl, as accused elsewhere.

It has nothing to do with not being a girl - I'm not.

It's your idea that discussing fashion = being wasteful/spending loads of money/"forgetting about rent." That's just BS.

no, the number of pieces of clothing shouldn't remain constant -- the amount of pleasure and utility obtained should.
Wow, that's a completely meaningless and vapid statement. How does one discuss the "amount of pleasure and utility obtained"?

But yes, the "number of pieces" should remain constant, in discussing the affordability of one's fashion. One shirt vs. twenty shirts for the same ultimate cost isn't a comparison.

Mah point exactly. Whenever I HAVE to buy shoes and underwear I think, shit, how many records could I have gotten? I think the same about food... when I worked in restaurants eating was basically free, and I had those jobs for so many years that I've never readjusted to having to dig into my pocket for something I'm forced to do three times a day. "I coulda hadda Genet!" [no better rhyme for "V-8" comes to mind... anybody?]

Can you give me a good reason why, if we all have enough clothes to get by on to begin with, number of pieces obtained should be the constant? Even if those pieces wear out quickly -- leading to more time spent shopping -- and aren't as comfortable to wear?

1. How many times can you wear it before you have to buy another one?

2. How many other layers of clothing do you need to combine it with in order to keep warm?

3. How itchy are you?

4. Is your back constricted at work because one of the shoulders of your shirt is slightly tighter than the other?

5. Does somebody who didn't see you yesterday know/care that you aren't wearing a different outfit, or do they notice how much prettier your merino wool minisweater looks under your Hamtaro t-shirt than long underwear would?

Even if those pieces wear out quickly -- leading to more time spent shopping -- and aren't as comfortable to wear?
Because this is a bit of a BS question. I've noticed no difference in the amount of time individual items last based on price. A $50 sweater is going to wear out about as fast as a $20 sweatshirt, and they're both going to lose out to a $5 gray sweatshirt from Wal-Mart.

So what is your complaint/argument? That you don't like people talking about clothes?

"I don't understand that.
-- kirsten (KM...)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The "Chicago has no fall fashion season" thing, that is.
-- kirsten (KM...)"

I mean it goes from 65 F to 30 F in about a week. Rrrr, what a miserable day it is today already... yes, I know, move already Ann, but have you seen how beautiful this city is? Ask Kenan.

Ann, this was your original comment. I explained that we don't forget our rent (esp. those of us who lived in NYC) and listed some cheap and fun means of obtaining a fall wardrobe. Now, your argument is against cheap clothes. You want us to pay our rent and shop at Barney's? Sex and the City will pay for its crimes against NY womanhood.

What you are missing out on is that digging through the thrift store bin is a form of pleasure for some people, while it may well be your idea of hell.

This would be a good angle for a Sylvia Plath-esque melodrama: Think of all the freelance articles she could have written, nay even a novel perhaps, if she could have just torn herself away from thrift store bin.

Me, I start to panic over the amount of time it takes to buy one pair of shoes.

Is this sicker than spending all Saturday at the thrift store?: I spend literally almost every waking hour these days working, since I'm trying to finish a novel, a play, two short stories, short stories on deck, another novel on deck; plus enough freelance bullshit to cover the bills, as the Reader doesn't pay me enough for my 40 weekly hours in the office (where it's too noisy to think about anything more involved than work and on-line convo) to pay rent eat and buy shoes. But I need health insurance, and I need money, and I need to get this fiction written or my skull will explode. So I hear people talking about all the hours they spend "saving" at thrift stores and scratch my head. I'd rather buy one nice sweater, walk and think, and then go back to MS Word. Maybe this has something to do with the fact that there are laundry machines in the basement of my apartment building. I can just walk down, stick in my quarters, walk up, and keep doing what I was doing; since the clothes were free and half of them came from the informal free-clothing exchange next to the washers, if anybody WOULD steal 'em I'd only begrudge the sox and bras.

BTW, that's my fashion advice: start an informal "take this if you want it" trading post in your building. One person where I live started doing it, and suddenly nobody who lives there needs to shop anymore. Lucky for me, the building is full of gay men. We do it where I work, too. Much easier than trucking to the store and more surprising too. It's like Christmas every day.

Go fashion folks.

I blame Kenan.

No, I think YOU didn't get the memo Mary sent me saying "shopping makes some people happy. It makes others unhappy." I avoid shopping because it makes me want to jump out of a window. I avoid television because it reminds me of strep throat. This doesn't make me joyless, sir.

*tears falling into laptop*

Anyway, yer making me repeat myself so I'll just cut and paste:

BTW, that's my fashion advice: start an informal "take this if you want it" trading post in your building. One person where I live started doing it, and suddenly nobody who lives there needs to shop anymore. Lucky for me, the building is full of gay men. We do it where I work, too. Much easier than trucking to the store and more surprising too. It's like Christmas every day.

Then I think, there's always Jamaica...

mine sometimes do it if I haven't retrieved it by a sufficient hour on the weekend. wtf, there's no 12-hour rule.

"If you spent all your time writing, you'd have nothing to write about. Every MFA program in the nation to thread.
Go fashion folks.

-- Tep (te...), October 28th, 2003."

The "shopping is more like livin' than interviewing subjects to write about" implication just slays me.)

bunch of savages in this town

Feel free to demonstrate how valuable your time is by going on and on and on and on and on about it, though!

(Oh, and I don't post on my free time. I'm at work. Too loud and busy to bother even trying to concentrate on long pieces of writing. So I recreate a bit between tasks. I've posted elsewhere that I don't have internet at home, because I want to make more concentrated use of MY time.)

Not exactly, but close; I wasn't comparing you specifically, but the attitude you were expressing that time that wasn't spent on writing (or at least, time not spent on writing that could be spent on writing) was time wasted. Maybe you didn't mean it that extremely; it's how it read to me.

(The MFA comparison is because those programs take essentially the same attitude, with a famously low "success rate" among their graduates, especially if you ignore works published in academic literary journals.)

And xpost and ditto what Anna said; it seems the more you post, Ann, the more you do so for no real reason except to point out what fools these mortals be, and that spot's been taken several times over.

I haven't seen anyone on the Fall Fashion thread since Saturday or before but I care. Deeply.

YES WE DO THANKYOUVERYMUCH.

Okay sorry. That is all.

I now have this mental image of me in an enormous black snowsuit zooming through a blizzard with a blue cat frozen to the end of my broomstick and Curly (Lambeau?) hanging off one of my moonboots as a freak winter tornado hurls me into the Tribune Tower... and I'm still cackling...

Oh, and Nick: "what u said."

Shit, I can't remember any of the witch's monkey lines.

Uh -- GO MONKEYS! GO! GO!

Hm, this reminds me of that kick-ass Barry Adamson song I was listening to on the way to work.

(BTW, I love the doggy, but a monkey costume is not exactly a nice wool sweater.)

keep the dog