October 2019 Shopping Reflections

October has been fairly shopping-heavy for me. Things have remained consistently hectic at the office - outside of when I was on vacation - and I keep wanting to browse online shops late in the evening after work as a way of unwinding and de-stressing after a long day. Not the greatest habit, I know. It hasn't (yet) resulted in my actually ordering too many things to try on and potentially keep, but the risk is certainly there. 

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I'd say that one of this months' purchases, the Kate Spade "Lana" loafers in a croc-embossed "cherrywood" shade, was an indirect product of those work stress-driven online window-shopping impulses. As I explained last month, my sudden interest in the trend of colorful croc-embossed leather came about that way. At the time, a pair of shoes seemed to be the most likely way I'd indulge in that trend, in part because I don't currently own many shoes suitable for warmer weather; I grind them down so quickly with frequent - or unfortunately, sometimes with not-so-frequent - wear. 

This month's other purchases, though, have been much longer in the making. Starting last winter, because of an office policy change that put the kibosh on jeans for casual Fridays, I became interested in looking for a pair of black pants in more casual, comfortable materials. The sole purpose of these pants would be to wear on casual Fridays at work during the colder seasons. One idea was for something from an athleisure brand, possibly a pair of Athleta Wander pants or something similar. 

I never did get around to shopping for something for those pants last winter. Pants shopping is generally such a chore when one is quite short and also has shorter-than-average legs, such that most "petite"-sizing pants are still a little too long. I could never get up the energy to start trying things on last winter. And as soon as the weather warmed up, I lost interest completely. Now that the weather's cooling down again, it was time to resume the search. 

I had observed that solid black denim appeared acceptable for casual Fridays under the new policy, so that was the direction I ultimately went in. Between this month's purchase and the source of my current pair of skinny jeans (similar), it seems that Gap jeans fit me best. I also tried on practically every similar design at Madewell (the 9'' mid-rise skinny jeans in ISKO stay-black were my favorite of the bunch) and Everlane, but the Gap ones looked best on me by far. 

Fashion - (TOTAL: $403.57)

• Elizabeth Suzann Ella Slip Dress in silk crepe, navy - $225.00 - (discontinued) - This dress has been on my main shopping list Pinterest board more or less since I started using it, for nearly a year. But I currently have plenty of summer dresses for the weekend that are still in good condition, so there was no real room for ordering it anytime soon. Then the company announced that the entire Ella product line would be discontinued, so I felt like it was "now or never," if I wanted it. (I like the neckline on the Ella much better than the necklines on the replacement designs, the Petra and the Polly.) The Elizabeth Suzann ("ES") silk crepe is nice, noticeably thicker and a bit more substantial than the Grana, Madewell, Everlane-ish silk I'm more accustomed to. Texture-wise, the ES silk has a little more stiffness than the Equipment silk blouses I've gotten at significant discount in the past. 
• Kate Spade Lana Loafers, cherrywood - $138.60* - I had a slightly strange experience when deciding on these: I originally ordered both this Lana loafer (Bloomingdales was price-matching a sale at Kate Spade) and the Darien loafer from Kate Spade directly, both of which were supposed to be the same "cherrywood" shade. But the Darien loafer was a completely different color! On both websites, the "cherrywood" shade looks like a deep, somewhat multidimensional red with uneven shading to give it texture. Instead, the Darien loafer was this one-dimensional, very flat-looking mauve shade, not remotely like the website photo. Whereas the color of the Lana loafer on the website is accurate to what I actually received. How very strange! Has that ever happened to you, where the sample photographed for the retailer's website must not have looked at all like the actual product? Another note: This may be my first pair of shoes with a leather sole - which does feel a bit fragile - so I may need to take these to the cobbler before I wear them out, and ask them to add a protective layer of rubber. 
• Gap Mid-Rise True Skinny Jeans, black rinse - $41.97 - All I wanted from this purchase was a pair of solid black skinny jeans that fit me well and had no fading or distressing or other design flourishes. Because Gap skinny jeans appear to suit my height and body shape the best,  based on each time I've shopped for jeans in recent memory, this pair fit the bill exactly.

*Indicates that price includes sales tax.

Going into November, the main thing on my mind shopping-wise will be holiday gifts for K and his parents. As I've somewhat sheepishly mentioned, my own immediate family takes an extremely unsentimental - but arguably practical - approach to gift-giving: The recipient selects their own gift, and might even go so far as to order it for themselves, in which case they receive reimbursement from the giver. K's family does holiday gifts the more traditional way, surprises all around. I enjoy participating in that family tradition, but it can be a little stressful trying to pick good and useful gifts. My gift selections for his parents have been a bit hit-or-miss over the years. I've had a few smashing successes, but also a few real duds, unfortunately.

Are you thinking ahead to holiday gifts for family and friends? Any good ideas for gifts this year? If you have a "business casual" workplace that observes "casual Fridays," are jeans allowed? I suspect that many business casual offices in various industries out there, in particular in non-NYC localities, generally allow jeans on at least some occasions. 

Outfit Post: Autumn/Winter

Coat: Ellen Tracy Wool Blend Stadium Coat, 6P (similar from J.Crew)

Sweater: unbranded, from Taobao (no longer available)

Jeans: Gap Mid-Rise True Skinny Jeans in 360 Stretch

Shoes: Sam Edelman Petty booties (most similar current design)

I'm always taken aback by how quickly the seasons change here. Every year, it feels like I go through the process of relearning what clothing works best for each range of temperatures all over again. One day last week, I put together a desk-to-dinner outfit with my new J.Crew collarless sweater blazer (photographed here), one of my many work dresses, a light and floaty Nordstrom cashmere and silk-blend scarf (which still manages to be warm enough for me, even once winter really sets in), and some 50 denier tights (the Falke Matte 50 to be precise), only to be surprised to find that I was freezing in that outfit the entire evening. The wind cuts right through that collarless sweater blazer, even though I thought it was the right thickness for temperatures in the low 50s Fahrenheit. I still like my new sweater blazer, it clearly just isn't meant to be worn as a coat this time of year!

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Now that it's cooled down even more, it's definitely time for outfits that are capable of standing up to near-winter temperatures. I've had this Ellen Tracy Stadium coat for nearly three years now, after buying the 2015 version during the post-holiday sales in January 2016, and I still love it. In the years since I graduated law school, I tend to get a new wool coat about once a year. (Some of my far more frugal peers also do the same, and they comment that it's partially because it's the only particularly noticeable way to add interest to their outfits for most of the period from October through as late as April, as it's the only part of one's outfit that really gets seen while one is outdoors.) A few times, I've thought about getting the similar J.Crew Cocoon Coat in another bright color, and when I do, I usually take another look at that year's selection of Ellen Tracy Stadium coats too. I'm not sure if Nordstrom will stock it again, but they did in 2016 and 2017.

My "cashmere" turtleneck sweater is from a now-defunct Taobao listing. That's not an avenue I'd recommend anyone else ever look to for any kind of shopping, by the way. One just never knows what one will get, it's the wild wild West, and there are, er, also many listings for counterfeit products on there. Any listing or seller can say absolutely anything (not that I can understand most of it, with my extremely weak Chinese reading skills, ha!), and there's no way to verify any of it without having the item in hand. Plus, most US-based customers, myself included, shop through an agent like Superbuy, which adds additional fees. And international shipping is always a significant expense, of course. This particular unbranded sweater came from an listing that had a lot of positive reviews, as well as customer photographs of the real item, which can be helpful, but well, the idea of caveat emptor, or buyer beware, definitely still applies.

Sam Edelman may have officially discontinued my beloved "Petty" booties in leather (size 6M only still available at Zappos), though they still offer it in suede. The closest new style they make now is a slightly edgier pointy-toe design called the "Walden", which I don't think would work for the office as well as the round-toe design on the Petty, at least as far as my fussy tastes and preferences for office wear are concerned! I'm totally sad about this change in their product line because I love my old booties. I actually manage to have two pairs of the "Petty", my old, worn-in ones from around December 2014 and a newer pair, made in a stiffer leather, from around December 2016. I think it's well-established that it's generally a mistake to buy backups, even of the most well-loved items, at least until the old one is well and truly worn out and unusable. It wasn't until last year that I started wearing the newer pair, I held onto them in their box for an entire year without touching them. As of now, though, both pairs are getting tons of use. I wear my newer pair to court, meetings, and other more formal occasions in fall/winter and my older, well broken-in pair the rest of the time.

Have you ever bought an identical backup of a well-loved item, only to realize that it wasn't the right choice to do so? Did the backup item get any use in the end? 

February 2018 Shopping Reflections

So this was an huge shopping month, especially for total dollars spent. I also have, er, a few online orders in the pipeline, so I suspect that next month will also not be a low-spending, low-shopping month. I've maybe been a little too focused on getting "joy" out of the items I buy, and not enough on budget and other limits. Going forward, I'll try to rein it in because it's starting to feel a bit much, but my efforts may not be fully apparent until April, at the earliest.

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The good and reasonable shopping news is that my search for new skinny jeans is complete. The choice came down to two pairs of mid-rise, dark wash Gap skinny jeans in petite lengths, the one I picked, or one that was cheaper, with slightly lower cotton content, but that also had more flattering fading. In the end, I picked the more expensive pair, partially because of the fabric content, but mainly because there was something a little off about the front pockets on the other pair, with the white fabric lining always threatening to peek out.

For a while after I bought my previous pair of skinny jeans, which were also my first ever designer jeans (from Rag & Bone, similar), I felt that it was totally worth it to have stepped up so dramatically in price from previous pairs (always from Uniqlo). I thought the Rag & Bone jeans miraculous because they never seemed to stretch out enough to sag between washes, a huge issue with past pairs of Uniqlo skinny jeans. It seems that I must eat my words a bit, because the Gap skinny jeans also don't sag noticeably on me between washes. It's also nice that they're petite length, as I never quite got around to hemming the Rag & Bone pair in the two years I owned them. 

Fashion - (TOTAL: $ 755.49)

• Coach Rogue, dark denim - *$605.89 - (color no longer available online, full price in other colors) This was the big ticket item of the month, and hopefully of the entire year. I decided to get this instead of the Mansur Gavriel large tote that was on my shopping wish list, though it's an entirely different bag in many ways. Among other things, the Rogue doesn't accommodate a 13'' laptop or 8.5''x11'' notebooks, so it's not the work bag I had in mind. I'm a longtime Coach fan, but had not been interested in the new designs introduced since Stuart Vevers took the helm in 2013. I could appreciate that he was doing something interesting and new , but it was generally a bit too edgy or "young" for me. Then I saw someone on the street carrying the Rogue in this exact colorway, as a tote, rather than by the top handles, and I was enamored. Within days, I'd gone to Coach in Soho (after first visiting Mansur Gavriel to see if I should stick with my original shopping plan instead), and when I saw this on sale for only a little more than it would cost used on eBay, I bought it. I've carried it to work every weekday since. 
• Mid-Rise True Skinny Jeans in 360 Stretch, dark indigo - $68.00 - I found that all of the petite Gap jeans I tried this time ran a little smaller than the stretchier designer jeans I was trying on around the same time. I'm often a 27, but am solidly a 28 petite in all of Gap's varieties. The fabric is also a bit stiffer and has noticeably less "give" and stretch than anything else I tried, though most of those other jeans ended up having less than 90% cotton. The Gap skinnies that were a dark wash all over, with no fading, were the stiffest pair of the lot. Because Gap petite skinny jeans fit the best (the Rag & Bones in an ankle length were the next best thing, but with very low cotton content), it was an easy choice. Their petite length is maybe a touch longer than my perfect length, but that's ultimately a negligible issue. 
• Fossil Mini Tab Wallet - *$27.00 - Sadly, this is sold out at the sale price I got through Nordstrom Rack. I've been in the market for other card cases on and off for a while, ever since I realized how much I loved my Kate Spade Saturday one (long discontinued). This accordion-style card case is quite different, but I thought it might also have a good amount of space, more than most other card cases on the market. Plus, I liked that it was pink, and each slot is a different shade. This does have good capacity, but because the zip compartment in back is too small for anything more than two to three folded-up bills, it's not as functional as my old card case. It's pretty close, though! I'll be switching between this and the Kate Spade Saturday one. 
• Bloomingdales Pop Top Cashmere Mitten - $54.60 - (exact color no longer in stock, similar by Kate Spade in wool) Although my super cheap-y tech-friendly gloves from Uniqlo (I wear men's size M) keep my hands warm enough, they weren't functioning as intended because I couldn't wake up my phone with the gloves on. (Once the phone was awake, I could use it with the gloves just fine.) Thus, I've been in the market for pop top convertible  mittens for a while, and ended up getting these. In hindsight, these may not be the best value. As with most cashmere, it's a bit pill-y and the pop-top means it's not as warm as traditional gloves. But because I'm not that picky about gloves and don't need much, I'll be happy to use these, and likely won't be tempted to get another pair. 

* Indicates that price includes sales tax.

How is your shopping year going so far? Any other longtime Coach fans here, and if so, any thought about Vevers's work? People were kind enough to leave many helpful recommendations for other jeans when I first wrote about my search (thank you!), so be sure to check out the comments there if you're in the market for jeans of various kinds.