Tight Pants
So there I was at Target this morning buying school uniforms for YG (I wish someone would tell me why school uniforms went on sale a week after school let out and will likely not be available when school starts) and got into one of those casual conversations with an utter stranger about the buying of school clothes. At one point the woman said "Well, at least the uniforms don't shrink like their other stuff."
At which point an employee stocking a rack nearby said, "Oh, but that's what people want." At our frankly dubious stares she insisted: "You know, that's the fashion, everything has to be tight tight tight. Unless you're one of those hip hop boys." And she went back to her work.
I dunno. It's one thing to want to wear your jeans a little snug; it's another to have the legs shorten so you look like a red shirt on classic Star Trek. Just another case of customer support telling you that what you've called about is a Feature, not a Bug.
At which point an employee stocking a rack nearby said, "Oh, but that's what people want." At our frankly dubious stares she insisted: "You know, that's the fashion, everything has to be tight tight tight. Unless you're one of those hip hop boys." And she went back to her work.
I dunno. It's one thing to want to wear your jeans a little snug; it's another to have the legs shorten so you look like a red shirt on classic Star Trek. Just another case of customer support telling you that what you've called about is a Feature, not a Bug.
posted by Madeleine Robins at 1:53 PM
4 Comments:
My goodness! I would have thought people tolerated a higher polyester content in uniforms, and that made them not shrink. When you insist on natural fibers, you get a certain amount of shrinkage (if you don't go to the trouble of pre-shrinking the cloth before making the clothes. And sometimes a little bit even then.)
The Red Shirts are the anonymous folk whose job it is to go down to the planet and get killed, thereby demonstrating that the Stakes Are High and Things are Deadly. The uniform was a red shirt, and black trousers, slightly belled, that seemed to end about two inches above the ankle. They might have thought it looked futuristic, but mostly it looked goofy.
The uniforms generally don't shrink; it's the navy leggings (YG prefers leggings to slacks) that do, and they shrink far beyond what one expects. When buying stuff for the kids I generally get it a little big, because I know what cotton does. What amused me was the presentation of shrinkage as a fashion plus.
(This is Adri Turtle. I posted anonymously earlier.) Target employees can be remarkable in their understanding of high fashion. I'm not sure you should rely on them. I overheard a discussion among some of them last year -- none of them knew what slips were. They were supposed to unpack a box of the things and display them, and had no idea what they were used for. (The box was helpfully marked "nylon full slips.") Were they nightgowns? Dresses?
It was oddly shocking to find half a dozen women in their 20s so clueless about something so basic. Did none of their mothers believe in the things? This is Boston, where relatively few people confuse the "I disapprove" kind of not-believing with "it must not exist." I felt sorry for them and explained the concept.
Well that was a kindness, I must say.
Though, given some of the clothes I see displayed (God, do I sound like a need an ear trumpet and a cane to wave?) I would not have been startled to see full slips displayed as evening wear. Slightly sleazy evening wear, maybe.
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