Clothes Shopping 2023
Dec. 4th, 2023 01:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerRecently I've gone on my clothes shopping spree for 2023. Over the past 6 weeks I've bought 9 shirts and 1 pair of trousers. I call this my 2023 shopping spree because the last time I bought more than 1 item at a time was when I bought 8 shirts... in May 2021. (BTW, this recent set of 9 shirts are long sleeve while the 2021 set was short sleeve. I'm replacing different wardrobes in different years!)
This time, as with the last few times around, I did all my shopping online. That still seems a bit new to me as I resisted online clothes shopping for a few years. Oh, it's not because I'm afraid of technology or online identity theft or anything like that. I've been buying things online, including major purchases, regularly since 1997. It's just that buying clothes online took me a while to warm up to because details of color and especially sizing are so crucial, and you can't be sure of those online.
"Oh, but you can buy stuff online and return what doesn't fit," people assured me. Yes, I always knew that was possible. But it seemed like abusing the returns policy to me to order lots of stuff, 2, 3 or even 4 different sizes and colors, planning to return more than half of it.
What tipped me over was seeing that even traditional brick-and-mortar store chains were embracing online clothes shopping. As part of that they were implicitly endorsing the practice of plan-to-return-most-of-it necessary to make buying clothes online an actual, reasonable thing.
Speaking of returns, I did make a few this time. Those 9 shirts and 1 pair of trousers I mentioned are only the items I kept. I returned 2 other shirts because their colors didn't look as good in person as in the photos, and 2 other clothes items because they were inches shy of fitting properly even relative to the sizing chart the manufacturer provided. Overall 10/14 seems like a good hit rate. It's better than the 2/8 keeper rate I had on a buying spree earlier in 2021.
This time, as with the last few times around, I did all my shopping online. That still seems a bit new to me as I resisted online clothes shopping for a few years. Oh, it's not because I'm afraid of technology or online identity theft or anything like that. I've been buying things online, including major purchases, regularly since 1997. It's just that buying clothes online took me a while to warm up to because details of color and especially sizing are so crucial, and you can't be sure of those online.
"Oh, but you can buy stuff online and return what doesn't fit," people assured me. Yes, I always knew that was possible. But it seemed like abusing the returns policy to me to order lots of stuff, 2, 3 or even 4 different sizes and colors, planning to return more than half of it.
What tipped me over was seeing that even traditional brick-and-mortar store chains were embracing online clothes shopping. As part of that they were implicitly endorsing the practice of plan-to-return-most-of-it necessary to make buying clothes online an actual, reasonable thing.
Speaking of returns, I did make a few this time. Those 9 shirts and 1 pair of trousers I mentioned are only the items I kept. I returned 2 other shirts because their colors didn't look as good in person as in the photos, and 2 other clothes items because they were inches shy of fitting properly even relative to the sizing chart the manufacturer provided. Overall 10/14 seems like a good hit rate. It's better than the 2/8 keeper rate I had on a buying spree earlier in 2021.
