My mother pointed to a dress in the Lord & Taylor ad and said it would look good on me. That’s a subtle hint that I should try to get and wear that dress. It looked kind of nice, but of course no mention of it was made anywhere on the ad (“On the Cover: etc.”) that would clue me in as to how to get that particular one. This meant either going to the store and having a discussion with a sales associate, or going online and trying to pin it down. I did the latter. The last time I went looking for a clothing article in a picture at the store, I wound up having a battle of wits with a sales associate at Macy’s who, of course, never got a copy of what she was supposed to be ready to sell to anxious customers like me. We found the article, but she was still too jaded to appreciate the smell of victory (over the smell of fake leather and fitting rooms).
I found the dress easily enough on the website: a Vince Camuto. It took about three seconds to click on the size chart to find that sizes stopped at 14.
Of course, one can’t blame the designer for restricting his sizes, but he did lose a potential first-time customer in the process. Maybe next time–the third–will be the best experience ever. How I’ll get there, now that I’ve exhausted two different forms of shopping, is yet to be discovered.