Rag trade

This piece ran in Sunday’s Washington Post Opinion section, and it sparked a veritable storm of comments. Because it points out a fact of contemporary life that is blindingly obvious to every woman over the age of 30: the ready-to-wear clothes we’re being offered everywhere from Banana Republic to Ann Taylor are ugly, over-priced, shoddy and not designed for actual female body shapes. And the buying public are therefore declining to pay good money for schmattas that pill, rip, shrink, fade and otherwise fail to fulfill their function.

Ergo the more than 2000 responses from WaPo readers who do not want to wear low-riding jeans, transparent knit off-the-shoulder or sleeveless tops, mini-skirts or other garments that make you look like you’re on the game. Especially when worn with the four-inch heels that seem inescapable in either shoes or boots.

(Seriously: I get the feeling that the fashion industry thinks that the only women with money to spend on clothes are stick insects with the sophistication of Hannah Montana. What makes me really uncomfortable about this is that “the look” is decidedly sexualized, like tweens on parade on websites that I don’t really want to think about.)

Sales are down noticeably in these retailers, but evidently not enough to get them to start asking what women actually do want, which is an interesting business model. Because what they want are clothes that fit a variety of body types (some of which encompass curves), in colors that flatter and realistic sizes, and that don’t start falling apart the moment you walk out of the store. Quelle idée!

Here’s une autre idée: the retailers might consider the buyer experience. Because that, too, is clearly targeted at the younger millennial. You walk into any store in a mall, from Forever 21 to Nordstrom, and ear-damagingly loud music of some indeterminate origin assails you. It’s basically screaming (um): “We don’t want your money! Go away! You can’t handle the hipness!” When Nordstrom replaced their live piano with ersatz head-banging crap throughout the store, I recognized it as a sign of the End Days. So I just don’t go in there.

Then there’s the third-world feeling of shabbiness you get when you walk into a store with jumbled merchandise on tables and overstuffed racks, the entirely predictable outcome of corporate stinginess in staffing. A friend of mine in the Valley They Call Silicon used to pick up some extra cash working at Macy’s in the Stanford Mall during the holidays. Stanford Mall draws upscale shoppers, but that Macy’s looks like your average Kohl’s: clothes littering the sales floor (not just the dressing rooms), racks so crammed you can’t pull something out…ugh. Beth had a completely Sisyphean task of trying to make things neat, because she was the only one covering several departments.

And it’s not limited to that one store. I was in the Macy’s in Pentagon City at the weekend, with a 25% discount card. Between the fashion offerings and the slightly grody environment, I could not get out of there fast enough. I handed off my discount card to a trio of British tourists coming in as I was leaving.

Also—the industry’s humiliating approach to sizing might be worth a revisit. Marilyn Monroe was a size 12. These days retailers disdain to carry any double-digit sizes, even though it’s not a very well-kept secret that the American population is expanding in waistline as well as numbers. Why would clothing manufacturers and retailers basically fat-shame women by telling them that if they want something above a 10, they need to take their money and go online?

Moreover—these days a Size [whatever] is not a Size [whatever] across the board. Even from a single manufacturer, since the label goes on hundreds of items that actually come from factories wherever labor is cheapest, and China, Mexico, Ghana, Vietnam, Bangladesh and other places are not standardizing cutting templates. Nor, let it be noted, are the label-owners interested in paying for standardizing, since every nickel they shell out means that much less profit.

This means that trying to buy anything without trying it on first is a crapshoot with the odds decidedly not in your favor. Who has the kind of time to burn that allows you to take three sizes of everything into the dressing room until you hit lucky? Or to return items bought online in the vain hope that your guess on size would be right?

When I posted the WaPo story on Facebook someone said, “That’s why Goodwill is the way to go.” Well, except that thrift and consignment stores are hit and miss: Yes, you can find some good quality things, but the retail gods must be smiling directly upon you for you to strike while there’s something you like in your size. Plus, when you factor in their usually limited hours, if you’re working a 9-5 M-F gig, you only effectively have Saturday to make the rounds of second-hand stores. I, for one, don’t have that kind of energy or time.

If any retailers or manufacturers were reading the comments to the WaPo piece, I hope they were wearing protective eye gear, because there were floods of caustic words flowing. I also hope they take on board some of the sentiments: Holy crap, people: don’t treat the money-wielding market like we should be ashamed to want apparel that suits us, whatever we look like. This is pretty basic market awareness; think you can manage that?

Oh, and for the love of God, would you give us pockets?