Retail Therapy Backfires

After six weeks of being sick, I think I am better.  To celebrate, I went shopping.

Big mistake.  Huge.

I don’t know if it goes against girl code or something, but I do not inherently enjoy shopping.  I find it to be a tedious reminder of how I need to go to the gym/dye my hair/have a general makeover.  Be that as it may, I still need to clothe myself.  So, to Westfield Kotara I went.

Some of you may remember that I used to work at Westfield Kotara.  It has not improved in design since those days.  The car park is full of vultures crawling along the aisles, blocking up traffic and stalking people who give off the air of a vacating parking space.

Inside, it is marginally better, bar one important thing:  the shops themselves.  Or, should I say, the content of the shops.  You’d think a girl would be able to find something to wear on a Saturday night.  Not this girl.  I admit that I am likely stuck in a fashion warp, still looking for things I might have worn in the late 90s/early 2000s – i.e., flared jeans.  I understand that skinny jeans are in, I just don’t have to accept it.

Australian style is, should I say, funky.  Every item of clothing seems to exhibit one or more of the following features:

• batwing sleeves
• studs
• chains
• screenprinted photos of NYC or some anonymous female face
• puffy sleeves
• shoulder pads
• lack of shape
• ruffles
• hideous pattern

Now, this may come as a shock to those who know me, but I am not a funky person.  Really.  I’m not.  After two hours of confusion and disappointment, I returned to my car with a carrier bag from Esprit (I know, dorky.  More dorky because that was the word I chose to use.) containing a blue v-neck long sleeved shirt, a white long sleeved shirt, and a red trench jacket from Target.  To my dismay, the interior of the jacket is some sort of leopard print, which means that if I wear it I can never remove it, ever, for fear of exposing the tacky inner lining.

I almost bought a pair of highly desirable (but not too funky) brown boots from Aldo, but the pair I chose was the last pair.  Unfortunately, they were a size six, not a size ten.  I drove home in the rain with my new purchases, trying to understand how I had spent $100 and still have nothing to wear tonight.

The only viable solution to my problem is to enlist the help of my stylist/best friend, Anne, who will be assisting me come July.  How I yearn for the familiar generic shops of the United States – American Eagle, Express, Victoria’s Secret, even the Gap!  I may choose to live in various locations around the world, but when it comes to fashion, I’m a strictly vanilla type of person.  Anything else is a little bit too overwhelming.