Beyond My Control

Clicks and Bricks

Online shopping. Retailers suffering. High Australian dollar. Controversy.

Frankly, I just like to shop.

I buy in stores, I buy online. I buy local products, I buy foreign products. I buy from local online stores, I buy from international bricks and mortar stores. I buy.

Clothes and shoes in particular. As I may have mentioned before I basically sleep in my closet. I get bored easily and like to buy new things. I am getting better at clearing out the old things. If I won the lottery I would spend my life travelling the world first class, staying in fabulous hotels and buying clothes and shoes. Oh, and set up a huge charitable foundation. Of course. Goes without saying. Right?

When I go overseas, which I do two or three times a year for work and/or a break, I go shopping. Always. I just came back from Paris and London with a number of successful work outcomes and a bag full of basics for next winter. And a pair of gold designer shoes.

I also frequent international online stores.

My rules for my international shopping trips, both real and virtual, are the same:

1.    I don't buy Australian designers or products overseas, ever. Although increasingly I can, and at prices that are comparable.

2.    I don't buy anything overseas that I can buy here at even close to the same price. So the chain stores that exist here I usually don't even look at. (I am probably one of the few people actively annoyed by the arrival of stores like Zara and the forthcoming arrival of Topshop and Uniqlo in Australia. I like picking up cheaper stuff from those stores overseas and have them be unique at home; now everyone will have access. (But, really, the arrival of Uniqlo will be a boon for buying basics, believe me.))

3.    If I can buy an international product in Australia for a comparable price, I will do so, but if I can't, I'll buy online.

The last point is relevant to why so many people buy online, I think. The items I buy online are items that either (a) I cannot get here at all; or (b) I cannot get here at an even remotely the same price.

Take those gold shoes. Bought in Paris, in the designer store, at full price. I can in fact buy them here if I look hard. For almost $300 more than I paid in Europe. I could also have bought them online, and likely would have had I not managed to sneak 2 days in Paris, for the European price plus non-prohibitive shipping.

When it comes to Australian products, I also buy in store and online from Australian stores. And over the last couple of days I've had the perfect example of these things coming together in a way that made me laugh. Largely at my own laziness, but also at the way things sometimes work out.

Last evening I was killing time in the office waiting for an email before I had to leave for a seminar. There was no point in starting something new, so I was surfing the web and visited the site of one of my favourite local retailers, Alice Euphemia. They have both a regular store and an online one.

I wasn't intending to buy anything, but then I saw a dress that I loved, by an Australian designer, and I ordered it, just like that. Took all of two minutes. If I had been in the store itself I probably would never have noticed the dress in the way I did online.

I got the confirming emails and then, about 10 minutes after I placed the order, my phone rang. It was the store. Hugely apologetic, she advised that the site hadn't been updated during the day, and they were sold out of the size I'd ordered. However, she'd ordered lower numbers in that size because the sizing ran big and most people fitted into a lower size. She'd call the designer to see if they had any in the size I'd ordered, but in the meantime would I like them to send across the smaller one to try and check?

Here's where the worlds collided, because, really, I was just being lazy, as the actual store is only a block and a half from my office. So, I said I'd just come down and try it on. If it fits, great, if not, they'll re-credit my card in the store on the spot.

And so I went down today. They not only had the lower size waiting for me, they'd called the designer and had the larger size on its way if necessary. I tried on the dress, the lower size fitted perfectly, they wrapped it up and I left the store, bag in hand. Complete with online purchase bonus bottle of nail polish.

If I'd actually spotted the dress in the store and the smaller size was the only one on the rack, I'd never have tried it on the same way I'd never have ordered it online.

When I got back to the office the 'your order has shipped' email was in my inbox.

Best of both worlds.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to trawl the internet for shoes, because the gold ones just don't go with the new dress...

 

 

 

 

Trending - The 90s

After four days of New York Fashion Week a number of trends are already apparent – a neutral palate, especially white; minimalism; sheer layers – but the one that leapt out at me first was the return to the 90s.

The first half of the 90s were the first years of my independent adulthood, my first years out of a school uniform, when I was both aware of fashion and controlling my own fashion destiny to any significant degree.

Accordingly, watching the looks come down the runway during the first half of fashion week I feel like I’m travelling back in time to greater degree than I ever have before when fashion group-think decided it was time to revisit a new era. Or the 70s again, and some more.

The first half of the 90s are now long enough ago, apparently, to be revisited. An era in which I was already an adult, if not an overly stylish one. (I will avoiding pausing at this point to consider how old that makes me and just barrel ahead.)

Having now viewed a few collections I remain unconvinced that we’re quite ready to go back there yet. I’m not writing it off, and I know that returning to the era is inevitable because fashion always, always revisits, but I’m going to have to see it put into practice before I’m sold.

Charlotte Ronson’s collection is the most obvious example of the return of the 90s. She certainly captured that grunge style that I so enjoyed at the time because it was dead easy and comfortable and perfectly suited my lazy university lifestyle. However the collection felt too derivative to me. It didn’t seem like enough of a new take on the grunge-ish aesthetic, but rather a collection filled with looks pulled directly from the photo albums of my university classmates. The floral slip-dress over the t-shirt:


The long skirt and vest (though I do love that vest):

 

The styling of the checked shirt tied around the waist of another floral slip dress (the print of which I actually loved) did nothing to create something that felt new:

However, while I’m not a slip-dress woman – I have hips and broad shoulders, so they really don’t work for my shape at all – I can see the potential appeal of the collection, especially for those who haven’t worn something very much like it before.

I couldn’t see the same potential in the 90s vibe in the first half of Rachel Comey’s collection though. The cropped tops and high-waisted flared skirts:

 

The high-necked sleeveless cut that gives almost everyone the illusion of Olympic Swimmer Figure:

Throw a pair of ankle socks and Doc Martens on that model and I’m back in 1992.

None of these shapes were flattering on anyone the first time around and are unlikely to be rendered so with the passage of time especially when there’s not much re-interpretation going on. I was more excited when Comey’s collection took a turn away from the flashback towards the end and delivered a number of really pretty dresses that were far more modern.



Sheer layering was also all over the runway during the first couple of days, some of which felt very 90s and some completely different.

The sheer t-shirt affect on this dress from Prabal Gurung could have walked an early 90s runway:


While the sheer layers at Richard Chai Love were quite another matter:


While I wasn’t a huge fan of Chai’s collection and don’t see the pants Chai showed translating to the real world, I expect to see layers of sheer tops – 90s inspired and not – heading into the stores in all sorts of forms next Spring.

And I find that far more interesting that the more derivative 90s looks seen in some of the other collections.

I need some reinvention in my revisiting.


Image source: www.style.com