My Secret to Buying Dresses? Shop for Pants.
My new dress proves that "putting a bird on it" isn't always a bad idea.
Doing Shop Small has been a great exercise of actually paying attention to what's in the stores all around me, since I can be a little dense about noticing my surroundings unless I'm paying special attention. (One day in high school, I asked my sister when they built the new bank at the corner of our street. She looked at me like I was nuts and answered, "Five years ago.")
Anyway, on one of my Columbus-esque expeditions around Mountain Brook, I stopped in a strange-sounding shop called The Pants Store. With the exception of jeans, I don't wear a lot of pants. Maybe it has to do with attending an uber-conservative high school that taught me that any woman who wears pants is a super-slut feminist bent on single-handedly destroying the American family.* Or maybe I'm just a lazy dresser and I find it easier to choose one dress than two matching pieces of clothing. The point is, the name "Pants Store" never seemed particularly enticing.
But, in the spirit of discovery (and because I glimpsed a cardigan sale through the window), I finally went in — and discovered lots of cute dresses, skirts and shirts, as well as great books and a little bit of jewelry. None of it was dirt-cheap, but it was all really reasonably priced, and I walked to the dressing room with an arm full of outfits. (I walked out of the shop with only two, proving I am an amazingly disciplined, saint-like example of self-restraint.)
Lots of people have asked me where to buy clothes locally. There are tons of fantastic boutiques in Birmingham, but I find them a bit intimidating. Turns out, The Pants Store, which started as a warehouse full of pants in Leeds, is more approachable than your average boutique, but they still have a very strong selection (click here for a photo gallery including a butterfly shirt that would make a great birthday gift for your favorite blogger, hint-hint). Plus, I like the irony in telling people I got my new dress from a store named after pants.
* Wondering who votes for Santorum? It's these people.