Yay for the long weekend! While work was closed due to a particularly important US holiday, I was using the time off to rest and relax with my former roommate in NY. It's one of the great pleasures of living in DC (I think) that we can hop on a bus at a moments notice, for relatively little money, and be in the big city in under 5hrs. You'd think I'd take advantage of this more often, no? No.
Big surprise I know, but I'm a lazy bum who prefers to do nothing with a book on her couch. STILL this time I stepped outside my little box and decided that 'eat, sleep, and shop' was going to be my vision for the weekend's debauchery.
One of the places that I just had to see was Re/Dress NYC. I've been reading about it on numerous plus size blogs for awhile as THE place to go for vintage and resale items. For me vintage stores have been more for shoes or jewelry because 90% of the time nothing fit - or if it did 'fit' it looked very very strange. Re/Dress though is something different. That store is made for my size or bigger and while it turns out I just don't have the vintage mentality, I did get a tremendous kick out of having so much stuff to look through.
I didn't end up buying a ton, I'm trying to be pickier and only get things I really love, but I still wanted to talk about what I tried on and why it didn't work for me. It's the only way any of us learn, right? Luckily my friend Makiko was willing to not only travel to Brooklyn to visit a store she could fit nothing in, but also be in the dressing room with my suddenly, just-at-the-worst-possible-moment, broken camera. Thus all the vertical/horizontal lines and the sometimes wonky colors can be attributed to my stupid Powershot and not to Makiko's camera skills. (I had a weird, funny only to me, slightly racist joke here but I think we're just going to use the delete button and keep it moving. I'm not Ricky Gervais.)
1. Random silver tank top dress (or shirt)
Verdict: While I like the idea of the sequin-esque front and black back, it not only accentuated my hips in a bad way the arm holes didn't fit. I'm using orange arrows to point it out there, but there's some bagging right about the bust where it didn't fit. And now matter how cheap, that's just not going to work for me.
2. Black jacket with ruffled collar
Verdict: WHOA is that flash doing nothing to help me or my stomach in that first picture. Sigh. Oh well the point I was TRYING to make here was that this jacket was just too big. While it was cut well (ish) it didn't hug my curves enough to really be flattering and since it had no way to close, there weren't any buttons, you couldn't really make the jacket mimic it either. The second photo is more to point out the ruffle - you can't tell here but this ruffle is detachable and the jacket also comes with one in gray so you can switch it out! I really like the idea, if not the fit, so I highly recommend you try it on if you're in the area.
3. CrAzY pattern dress
Verdict: Yeah I think this is just a fail all around. While the neckline's not too bad the dress is just shapeless everywhere else which if you're like me and have a larger bust is a big no-no. It makes everything big run together into a large shapeless blob and makes you look waay heavier than you are. I even tried this with a belt, though I admit I had limited options, and wasn't impressed.
4. CrAzY one shoulder dress
Verdict: Shapeless, crazy pattern, and one shoulder. That's a lot of unflattering stuff for one dress. Still I could almost see how someone who was not me might make this work, but I wasn't even gong to bother on a dress I didn't love that had a $70 price tag.
5. Navy stretch dress
Verdict: Oh did I want this to work. Even at $63 I wanted this to work. I loved the stretch Pinupgirlclothing.com like fabric, the 50's inspired silhouette, LOVED the white accents - really just loved the whole thing, but alas, it wasn't meant to be. The most obvious problem you're able to see in the second picture; the dress didn't fit exactly in the torso (I think) and me being shorter there and the dress being longer cause some back fabric ripples. Very not cute and no matter how much frantic tugging I did at the waist corrected the problem. Second? You can't tell in the first picture but with the belt closed I really couldn't breathe. Like I would have ended up as one of those corseted English and fainted if I wore it too long, couldn't breathe. The dress itself had plenty of stretch and zipped up fine, it's the reason why it can hug my curves to closely, but the cute belt that came with the dress was determined to chop off a lung. I had to let it go. It hurt me, but I had to let it go.
Sad to see all that huh? I completely agree. Luckily the next post will be much more light hearted as we focus on the stuff I loved and was able to buy! Yay!
Stay tuned for Re/Dress Part 2!
P.S. - I would have loved to show you pictures inside but my crappy camera totally failed at this. Sorry!
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