Can I help you with something?

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I don’t like shopping. There, I said it, shun me at will! I mean clothes shopping, I could grocery shop for days on end, I’m strange that way. I’ve never liked it, regardless of my age or size, and I’ve been a lot of ages and most sizes. Maybe it started with my mother, who loves to shop and bought me endless items of red clothing. Her favourite colour, but I’m part-ginger so it didn’t really work for me.

Don’t get me wrong, I love fashion, I just don’t follow it. I have a style, I suppose, but I’m not stylish. Like anyone I have favourite colours, shapes and what not. I generally prefer winter clothes to summer clothes, for example. I’m not even a big fan of sunglasses, never mind the rest! I love wool, and the term what not.

The thing about it is too, even if you’re a size twelve it doesn’t mean your clothes will be, and I don’t just mean when you’re fooling yourself that you’re a size twelve! You might need a size 16 in one top, then jump for joy when you need a size 10 in another (even if it is a poncho, for Electric Picnic!).

I tried on two coats today, in the same shop and the same size. One was too small and the other too big. Granted the one that was too small was also Aer Lingus green so it was for the best, else I’d be tormented with people asking me for peanuts and pretzels! It has happened me before with a green coat.

Or let’s say you go to buy a pair of black trousers. For work, funerals, waiting tables or what have you. You’d think that’d be simple enough? 

Men’s trousers come in two measurements; waist and length. If you know these two numbers it’s pretty much a done deal, and if you don’t presumably you just get out a measuring tape. It’s in the press beside the torch.

Women’s trousers, however, come in all manner of things, sizes only being a somewhat complicated starting point. Waist can come in 'dress sizes' (what chance do we have?), or actual waist measurements. Length is not necessarily in yards or inches, or even new fangled centimetres, but can be petite or short, regular or medium, long or tall. These definitions are completely arbitrary, and vary so much from shop to shop that sometimes long is too short and tall is too long.

Not to mention the fact that women also come in shapes such as apple, pear, hourglass, and I don’t know, stick insect, ironing board and beach ball? Then there’s the minefield of boot cut, straight leg, wide leg, skinny and what looks to me to be spray-on!  Don’t get me started on jeggings and treggings, capri and cargo, printed and patterned!

Do we still have hipsters? Is that still an option? To me that was always some sort of retailers' code word for ‘you’ll be pulling them up all day’. Like, one of my other personal favourites, the lie that is ‘with stretch’, which really means ‘with cling’. I'd respect a shop that printed that on their labels. 

Oh, that’s right hipsters are a type of people now, not jeans. 

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