Tag Archives: Shopping

Fashion Victim

Tips for clothes sales assistants

The scenario:  I pop into a major department store on my way home in order to spend my birthday and Christmas vouchers.  I’m looking for a pencil skirt so I can recreate the “Newsroom” look. Second from left.

Photo from HBO's Newsroom
Photo from HBO’s Newsroom

It’s the end of the day.  I’m not feeling uber-sexy – no make up, dowdy dress – but I am prepared to spend the cashola.

I flick through the selection in the Country Road section – slim pickings – and pull out a skirt.

Sales assistant bubbles up to me.   Early 20s.  Good looking young man with enthusiasm to burn.

“Oh you know what looks GREAT with that skirt…. this top!”

He pulls out a bright red and blue silky number… well probably polyester but you get the picture.

Maybe I looked a little doubtful.

Maybe he panicked.

Maybe he was trying to relate to someone twice his age.

At this point my tip is… STOP TALKING… because the next thing to come out of his mouth was:

“You know I got my mother to buy this and she looks great.  She always gets comments…”
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*cough* *splutter*

Now I don’t care how old I look or how young he is, or in fact how young and sexy his mother is – here’s the thing – NO ONE buying clothes wants to think of themselves as a mother*.

Or, more to the point,  in the same age bracket as the mother of a sales assistant.

DON’T MENTION THE WAR PEOPLE!**

It’s bad enough that they put “fat” mirrors in the changing room***, without being made to feel as unsexy and old as “someone’s mother”.

Needless to say I didn’t try the top on and I didn’t buy the skirt.

 

 

*Possible exception if you are buying maternity clothes

**The war against age.

***Also a stupid idea if you want to sell clothes

 

Fashion Victim, Modern Life, Shopping

Come to me my precious

I’ve decided I’m a grown up and therefore allowed grown-up (read expensive) make up.

The last lot I bought lasted a year and a bit and would have lasted longer but a certain teenage daughter decided it was really nice and used it.  Grrr.

So this week I ordered some more, this time direct from the States.

Now I would have bought it locally but the pricing in Australia is ridiculous.  Foundation for example… US$30-50 or AUS$70-90.

I do like going to a beautician and being “fitted” for my makeup – finding exactly the right shade and last year I bought locally.

But that is just price gouging.

So why such a mark up?

The US dollar is worth less than the Australian dollar at the moment – it should be cheaper.

Add some for freight maybe… that wouldn’t be more than a couple of dollars for each item max.

And I’d be happy to pay that.

Luxury tax?  Apparently not.

No it seems we are charged nearly 40% more for our makeup because we are willing to pay it.

Well I’m not.

Now the makeup I wanted (and this is the same with many other brands) does have an online presence in Australia, which has the same mark up as the shops.
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The US website does not ship directly to Australia.

How to shop in the US when they don’t ship to Australia directly

I set up a redirect address in the States through a US Shipping company. Just search for “US shipping only websites”.

Then I ordered my make up on the US site and sent it to my new US address.

When it gets there, I will get an email asking me to instruct them on where it goes from there.

Then I pay the freight to Australia.

The freight will be about $28 which is less than the mark up on one foundation.

I hate the fact that I can’t go down to a local business and support them, but if I do, well I will just be supporting an absolute rort which has gone on too long.

And now I have a new hobby… tracking my makeup as it makes its way to me…

I’ll let you know if/when it gets here.

The journey so far

UPDATE:

Getting excited now

Furthur Update:
It arrived. And I love it. And I saved 41.55% approximately by shopping online.

Fashion Victim, Relationships

Retail therapy

Gorgeous

A friend of mine had to go to the specialist today to find out about her prognosis post surgery.

The fact that she’d had to have the surgery in the first place sucked.

That she was going through this sucked.

And I knew, even though the news was expected to be okay, that just having to go sucked as well.

Love the purple underside

Anyway I got the news on my way home that the news was good. Best possible outcome.

Phew.

Thank goodness.

And then I teared up.

I realised I’d been holding my breath all day.

It started raining on my way home and I ducked into my favourite shoe shop hoping that the rain would pass.

There in the window were these beauties.

Half price.
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My size.

Last pair.

And size 40 is never the last pair.

I bought them.

Because LIFE. IS. TOO. SHORT.

And because a last pair in my size is a sign my friend.

In October when I see my friend I will wear them and pop a bottle of Very Expensive Champagne.

Just saying.

 

UPDATE:

Me:  I bought some shoes today.  You’ll hate them.

Groover:  Really? [looks in box]  I like the colour.

 

Fashion Victim, Shopping

How cheap is too cheap?

4 Comments

The other day my son said he needed some new clothes.

Now I’m lucky, because he doesn’t care about labels and would rather have lots of cheap clothes than one or two designer pieces.

Except when it comes to hiking gear.

And he is still enjoying the suit I bought him for his year 12 ball.

So we went down to Kmart at his request and for $138 bought:

2 jumpers
3 teeshirts
2 pairs of jeans
socks
jocks
1 pair sandshoes

Not a bad little haul.

But I felt guilty.

The jeans were $7.

How can you make jeans for $7??

You can’t even buy the material.

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Growing the cotton. Harvesting it. Processing it. Cutting it. Sewing it. Delivering it from China to Australia.

Then the mark up in the shop.

$7.

Who have I had to exploit to enable me to buy those jeans?

Today, in order to write this post I went to the Kmart website.

From the website

50 cents?

Must be a typo.

This is getting ridiculous.

The guilt didn’t stop me from buying the jeans this time.

I try and justify the cost against the $150 I spent on my own jeans a few weeks ago.

And that’s stupid too.

This world is crazy.

Fashion Victim

“She’s just got big bones” takes on a new meaning

5 Comments
So... would you say she's just big boned?

So I walked past this window display the other day.

It’s been there for a while but today I actually looked at it.

I’m not sure I like it.

It’s probably an ironic statement about the skeletal frames we see on the catwalk but even so…

I mean it’s not Halloween or anything.
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Does it entice me to go into the store.

Not so much.

I guess it stands out.

What do you think?

Yea or Nay to skeletons as manniquins?

Shopping

Four shopping days

3 Comments

“Happy place, happy place.”

There are only four days til Christmas to finish (er make that start) my Christmas shopping.

And in reality – make that one and a half.

I’m playing Bridge on Tuesday afternoon, hair and tanning on Wednesday, Thursday two functions to attend, so really… I’m looking at today.
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!!!!!!!!!

Which is why I’m chanting “happy place” in my head and distracting myself with photos like this one… taken by Dippity:

Rose

Introspection

Cheery Christmas

12 Comments

Yesterday Santa came to work to wish me a merry Christmas.

I had been a VERY good girl indeed and was given a bottle of Amberley Shiraz.

I felt like drinking it straight-away but that isn’t the behaviour of a very good girl is it?

*warning… rant ahead.

This Christmas has been stressful.  I find myself crying on the way to work for no good reason.  Well apart from the obvious ones. 

You know, working full time while trying to get the house and garden in some kind of order for Christmas day and do my Christmas shopping.

It would have all been a lot less stressful if I was an organised person and did all that preparation stuff weeks ago.

Of course no one else cares what the house and garden looks like so why I bother trying to get anyone else to help is beyond me.

So here’s my day yesterday.

Got up early to start work early enough to enable me to leave early to do some Christmas shopping.

Left at 3 and went shopping for table decorations, crackers and the like.

Got home at 6, put on a load of laundry and had dinner (cooked by Groover).

Cleaned up after dinner.

Folded 5 loads of washing. (washed in part by Dippity)

Spent two hours trimming and weeding and sweeping the jungle next to the pool.
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Went to bed.

This morning I woke at six with a blinding headache.  Took two paracetomol.  Went to work.

And I’ve been crying all morning.

I can’t work out why.  I’m not normally this much of a mess.

And it’s pressure I am applying to myself. 

As I said, the rest of my family don’t care that the pool is a mess so why am I beating myself up about it.  Why add it to the impossibly long list of crap I have to do before Christmas?

Why not just cut myself a break?

I guess the fact is that I am not superhuman.  I can’t work full time and organise the house and dinner for 16 people, and go to our regular Christmas eve party and organise Christmas presents in three days.

It’s not like I’m even doing the cooking!  Groover is (apart from a salad) and we’re getting everyone to bring food.

So you know what?

I’m letting go trying to be perfect.  If presents aren’t bought, if there’s a big pile of clippings next to the pool, if the house is a tip, well… hey I’m human.

A normal, disorganised, but hopefully not teary person.

Merry Christmas.

PS:  Of course I won’t really let go.  I’ll beat myself up for being a bad mother, a lousy housekeeper, a lazy gardener, a stressed-out hostess and somehow, it will all come together.

Just book me in to the funny farm in January.

Shopping

Shoe heaven again!

15 Comments

Hello from way up here!  Up here in the stratosphere!

Aren’t these shoes great.  Okay I know they are probably not to everyone’s taste… Groover and Dippity don’t like them… but I think they are fab.

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And they weren’t too expensive.  🙂

Can’t run in them though…

Family

Surf shop boycott!

Today we had our annual social club Kids Christmas Party at Adventure World.  Always a good day out this represents the reason I pay my weekly two dollars to the work social club as it is such good value.  I pay $15 a ticket… normally adults pay $42 and kids $34… a saving of $92.  And it is only the one function.  Bargain!

Over the years we have got this outing down to a fine art.  Rashies, hats and sunblock for everyone.  Towels.  Seats for adults (because). One bag with lunch consisting of 3 baguettes filled with various fillings chopped into thirds.  One large container of drink.  And if the temperature is below 30C, light jumpers – hey that Freo doctor can get cold you know.  Today’s maximum was 23.  IMHO just a tad on the cool side for swimming but I digress.

Now. I’ve been a bit slack this year on the exercise front and I’ll admit that I’m not at my most svelte so I needed to upgrade the boardies and rashie which – to be honest – were a little snug.

So I got up early to pick up the baguettes from the Kirkwood Deli and then popped by the local surfshop for a quick browse.

The surf shop is big.  It’s like a supermarket sized surfshop.  There are racks and racks of bikinis, boardies and rashies not to mention several different brands of thongs (the ones you wear on your feet), a large selection of sunglasses and all manner of other surfing and social paraphernalia (gee whiz that’s a big word… had to look up the spelling).

But could I find anything remotely attractive to try on?  Attractive on me??  No.  Nothing.

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“Ah no actually.  I’m looking for a pair of boardies – to the knee would be great and would you happen to have a rashie that isn’t quite so skin-tight?”

“Yeah well those are the boardies” – he said pointing to the rack I was standing next to full of microshorts, “and all the rashies are tight.  That’s how they make them. Maybe you should get a tee-shirt.”

“Great” I muttered.  Resentfully.  No helpful suggestions there.  Silently screaming – couldn’t you please HELP ME?  Surely there must be something for the slightly overweight, over 40, want to spend some time with my kids in the sun mum?

But no.  There isn’t.

I did find a nice tee-shirt though.

Introspection, Modern Life, Random

The ethics of buying and selling online

So I bought a Chloromatic ESC 24/36/48 Replacement Cell yesterday online for my pool which is now greener than my lawn. And the lawn is green.

I shopped around and found one at a very good price – about $200 cheaper than any other store either online or actual. And in good faith – I bought it.

Today, I get a phone message… “Oh um hi, you ordered a replacement cell yesterday, and well we’ve just taken over the company and we’re losing so much money at that price and um, could you call me?” And she leaves an incomplete phone number.

I went back to the website and I can see they’ve upped the price to $665 – still $30 cheaper than all the competitors.

So what do I do? Play hard ball? After all I have my order confirmation email… and would they give me a discount if the day after I ordered they dropped their price? If it had been an actual store I would have it installed already. And I probably wouldn’t have bought it online if the price hadn’t been so much less.

Or, be compassionate – they have just bought the store apparently… she did sound a bit upset.
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Or, compromise – ask for the cell at cost price and pay postage…

I’m on the horns of an ethical dilemma – what do you think I should do?

Update: Sometimes when you do nothing, the problem solves itself.

We have tried to contact you about the cell you purchased on our website. We are currently under new management as from July 1, 2007 and hadn’t realised that the companies that supply the cells have had a huge price rise. So we didn’t realise until you purchased it that we can’t even buy the cell for that price. If you can help us get the order up and running would you consider buying the cell for our “cost” price with FREE delivery.

Of course I graciously said yes.

And will use their business again.