Dear Retail Fashion Industry,

I want to stay together. I do. I want this relationship to work. It’s because I want it to work — and not merely out of laziness, as you may reasonably have concluded — that I have chosen to hang in there with it instead of dumping you for a sewing machine, bolts of fabric, and dowdy patterns purchased from eBay. And I have hung in there, despite your insistence on changing — nay, compulsion to change — hemlines, waist heights, shoe heels, and new blacks on my ass every year. I mean, I don’t even know which “new black” we’re on right now…plaid? Pink again? It’s not the kind of mixed message a girl should have to put up with, is what I’m trying to say, and yet, here I am.

But some shit’s got to change, boy, because I’m no fan of changing a bobbin but don’t think I won’t leave your ass for Singer if you don’t take a lengthy swim in Lake Skirts With Pockets, and I mean pronto. And do not be starting in about how pockets “ruin the line,” because you know what else “ruins the line”? Trying to stuff a handful of coins up my ass because I just bought a Diet Coke at the deli and I don’t have my bag with me. Other line-ruiners include: scrabbling around in my purse, trying to find the damn thing, only to fish it out finally after a month of Sundays and find that the reader is scratched all to hell by the other crap in my bag like my keys and the corners of hardcover books; and storing paper money in a budge between my underwire and my boob, which leads to revolting local store clerks with boob-sweat-soaked currency, and also to unfortunately-located paper cuts. Fold one of those new twenties wrong, you’ll need stitches under there. Yeah, “gross.” It’s 2005. Chicks have important shit to carry around. Throw a sister a pocket. You can make it in the shape of a strawberry or a butterfly if you want, or an ovary or the Lifetime logo or whatever you think it is I like, hell, I don’t care. Put it on the back, put it in the front, put it underneath like on tennis spanky pants, whatever, but I’ve spent decades jury-rigging bindles out of the fronts of t-shirts, and: over it.

“Okay, well, how about just a little poc–” Ohhhhhhh no no no no no. No “little.” No shallow slash pockets, because when I sit down, change falls out, and also, my MetroCard gets all bendy. And no little pocket gestures, either, like that otherwise-rad skort I bought at New York & Company the other day where I cut open the pockets — and excuse me, but hi, quit sewing the pockets shut, fool. If your anti-pocket argument is that they ruin the line, don’t put the damn things on in the first place, then, but if you do give me a pocket, don’t make it a whole videogame-crack-level enterprise where I need surgical forceps, a hundred-watt bulb, and a jeweler’s loupe to get the damn thing open without slashing a big old clumsy hole in the front of my foxy new mini by mistake — I swear to God, every freakin’ time, I’m like a Mafia surgeon digging a bullet out of some wiseguy’s leg and he’s thrashing around on the table all “aiieeeeee,” “don’t move, you’re making it worse,” ay yi yi, enough already. Just put the pocket on or don’t, but don’t sew it shut all disapproving “well…you’ll do what you like, I guess.” And put a whole pocket on, because I cut open the skort pockets, and seriously, I can get exactly one finger into that pocket, up to the first knuckle. What damn good, exactly, if I may ask, is a pocket that size? What is it that you envision me storing in a pocketillo such as this — a Canadian dime? A fingernail clipping? A sunflower seed? Wait, scratch that — “a shelled sunflower seed”? “Hey, has anyone got an eyelash I can borrow?” “I do, right in this here handy-dandy nanopocket!” …No. Hit me with a four-by-four. Paper money, MetroCard, maybe a lighter or some gum, that’s what goes in a pocket, not trace evidence. I don’t have time to spelunk every compartment of my bag, dude.

And let’s get back to the skort subject for a moment. First of all, I hate the word “skort.” It’s so Smurfy. That “k,” blech — “today on Kiddie Korner, skorts!” I know “a skirt with built-in shorts” is longer to say, but it’s totally worth it. Also? The skirt needs to go alllllll the way around, because when it’s only in the front, it does something weird to my butt in the back, and it’s not just me, either — any woman wearing a skort, the front looks cute, but then the back is all…I don’t know. Pull-y? Especially if it’s a side-button skort, because the material gets all cranked forward…it’s not good. Build a whole skirt onto a pair of shorts. Same “miniskirt, now with extra modesty!” concept, allowing me to bend over and pick up the buttful of change I just dropped without flashing the whole block my undies; waaaaaaaay more attractive execution.

Next topic: the seasonal palette. I can’t wear off-toned acid-y colors; I can’t wear aqua or fuchsia, or that yellow that looks awesome on the African-American model on Banana Republic’s website but “correctional facility” on me. I am a brunette who, doctor’s orders, is also quite pale, it is what it is, I don’t want special treatment — but if you pick a palette that’s problematic for some people in a given season, you need to offer basic black and white choices too. Otherwise, it’s like you…don’t care about my feelings or something. I mean, I don’t love how everything has a cascade of ruffles around here these days, but I can live with it…in black. Burnt rose? Will not happen. Teal? Also will not happen, ever. “Purple is the color of rrrrrroyalty!” That’s nice. Let royalty wear that hideous Pat Benatar top, then. Don’t do that shit where you don’t offer it in black because then everyone will buy it in black instead of in the traffic-cone-orange you stupidly manufactured umpteen thousand pairs of — not my problem.

Same thing goes for shapes. I have tried to think of a style that is more unflattering to a greater number of people than the omnipresent Bermuda short, and I have failed to come up with one, save perhaps the Land’s End mid-calf pleated skirt, which is evidently made in a high-tech fabric that wicks away all pheromones and secondary sex characteristics, because not-hot damn is that frumpy, and by the way, could we please get a formal, FDA-approved, universal and final ruling on the difference between Bermuda shorts, clam-diggers, pedal-pushers, capri pants, and cropped pants? And can we then force every single retailer in the world to agree to call all the same pants the same thing, because what is a clam-digger at the Gap is somehow a crop at Esprit, a cropped city pant at Banana, and a short capri at Hilfiger? And maybe just get rid of the term “pedal-pusher” altogether, because it brings to mind Nancy Drew’s chunky friend Bess bicycling down the street on a dorky red Schwinn and blithely (read: dorkily) ringing her bicycle bell, and it’s not a chic mental image? “[Chrrrring chrrrring!] Gee, Nancy, Ned sure is swell! It’s loads of fun that he doesn’t have genitals! Also, these gingham pedal-pushers make me look like a human bag of baseballs! Neat!”

Anyhow. Bermuda shorts = barf. Bermuda shorts in pale colors that attract stains to the coffee-slurping city-dweller = extra barf. And the cut is just impossible; the leg is narrow, which makes a lot of people look bulgy, but if you make it any wider, it’s either too butch or just plain fug. It’s not a good look for anyone except the J. Crew catalog models, and frankly, even some of those girls don’t look that great in them. Furthermore, the point of shorts? Is? That they? ARE SHORT. New York City summer, yo. Needing a breeze over here. But can I find a four-inch inseam flat-front short? Oh hell no. Not this summer. I can find the detested Bermuda shorts, and I can find hoochie-koo non-seam underpants-with-belt-loops shorts cut up to my cervix, but for an actual pair of actual shorts that are actually short, I had to buy them in the men’s section. “Thanks.” God.

What a revelation the men’s section always is, too, where sanity reigns and sizing is actually done according to measurements. There’s no 6 or 8 or “regular” and “long,” there’s no plus-sizing, there’s no mucking around with subjective ideas of petite and tall. Waist measurement, inseam measurement, thank you, goodbye. Can the women’s side of the aisle please get on the rhyme-or-reason-in-sizing stick? Because “10” doesn’t really tell me anything. It tells me, usually, that it won’t either fit like a tube sock or fall straight off me, but that’s about all it tells me. It doesn’t tell me what body type the item is cut for, or on what body type it will look either cute or disastrous — can you please get rid of numbered sizes and do something more along the lines of “32/30 with boy hips and a bit of a cheese-sandwich gut”? Because a J. Crew cord will look great on that body type, I can tell you firsthand. You know what won’t? Black pants from Express, American Eagle minis, low-rise Old Navy PJ pants, and Seven For All Mankind jeans. You know what would have saved me a lot of trouble last week? You know what would have prevented Toque from having to tell me that, while the 31s gave me a hot ass, they also gave me “drag box” in the front so I looked like I had a cock? A tag with that information on it. Just a little note to the apple-shaped ladies in the crowd letting them know that, unless you’ve got a little bit of backyard to pull the material flat across your pelvis, those jeans are not so much Sarah D. as they are S. Douglas. You know? Would it kill you? Just, like, a little chart or something that says whether a particular peasant top is really just for B cups, or that certain drapey outfits start out cute on petite Toque, remain cute on medium-size Wing Chun, but then when I put them on, the outfit is the city of Bea Arthur and I am now the mayor?

And speaking of that: larger dressing rooms so we can three of us fit in there. Otherwise we have to put the shoes back on and come back out and then we have to wait for Toque to model and if we want her to try the pink it’s a whole thing where we don’t have a runner because none of us wants to give up her cube…sharing a dressing room is the new black. You don’t have to like it but that’s how I am rolling from now on. Can two Canadians and Bea Arthur: The Anthropologie Years fit in it? Then it’s big enough. Barely.

No, I am not “done.” Stop with the chambray. Chambray is so, so ugly and plain. Chambray shirts, chambray skorts, chambray overalls for the love of Pete, chambray for a boy or for a girl — all completely unacceptable. The addition of a kicky dragonfly appliqué only fans the flames of my rage. You must get religion at The Church of Chambray Sucks, of which I, the Reverend Horton Haaaaaate, am the senior minister, or I will Singer it up. Don’t think I won’t. My grandmother made her own clothes, and several of her outfits have passed through decades of fashion flailing with no diminishing of their awesomeness; I have a genetic advantage, and I have had it with not only chambray but also transparent blouses to which there is no matching a tank top, flounces that make me look like a traveling production of Ho-klahoma!, the word “slacks,” lime green, the concept that a girl who wears an XL is a sphere instead of perhaps just tall and would either way enjoy wearing every damn t-shirt in the world as a belly shirt which no, the little fins on my hips that I get because I’m a 10 in the waist and an 8 in the dupa, pointy witch-toed boots, clear straps, gapping, cotton items marked “dry clean only” like pull the other one, wearing kids’ watches because my wrist is a twig, not getting to wear cool bangles and strap cuffs because ditto, getting yelled at in petite stores because I like to shop petite because I have shortish legs for my height, banded waistbands that don’t stay banded and cut across the bellybutton, three-quarter sleeves on my gorilla-ass twig arms, zip-front sleeveless goddamn mock turtlenecks, the utter and heartbreaking absence of a criss-cross-back tank top in which a lovely lady such as myself might rock a pair of 34DDs, and 34DD bras, which hi, it’s a pair of boobs, not an archaeological dig, I don’t need an actual scaffold, let the underwire do the work and quit it with the Ace-bandage straps.

I dig wearing mass-produced stuff; I copy my friends’ outfits all the time; I don’t need to rock a unique style when a good day is “shirt that doesn’t show sweat, and skirt with ‘only’ seventy-eight basquillion cat hairs on it which clash not only with the skirt but, wretchedly, with each other.” I am impatient, impulsive, and cheap — your dream girl. Why do you have to be like this? You can see other women, that’s fine, but how about you make each of us feel, you know…special? Like we matter? Like you aren’t comparing us to some ridiculous porno ideal or little-boy-Lohan figure? We’re all different shapes. It’s not a value judgment; it’s a fact. I can’t rock the same dress a curvy girl can; she can’t rock the same bootcuts I can. Quit making us try, and change the sizing so we don’t all get those nasty tightness creases on our abdomens after eating a granola bar.

Singer has a foot pedal, bitch. Don’t test me. I will walk.

Figure it out,
Sarah

June 6, 2005

Share!