Last Splash

The gene pool could use a little Chlorine.

From the mind of my good friend Windhazel (I'm to lazy to bother linking, sorry) comes a light in the bleary uninspired day I'm having: a post about low rise jeans. Now, being a retail professional and "fit expert" I will promote a reasonable amount of low rise in jeans: the kind you find at Eddie Bauer or like stores catering to a population whose general age is 22 and above.
If the waistband sits approximately 2 fingers' width below your belly button, you are wearing them correctly (unless you have no hips, so you buy them a size or two too small and they are squishing you to create the "muffin top" look...in which case you are a very classy lady). They can be a very comfortable alternative for a girl like me, who is 5'9" tall and all legs. Long pants usually have a crotch that hits me at mid-thigh, causing me to hike them up almost above my true waist to fit properly, which is just not comfortable. However, I need the 34" and higher inseam, so lower rise jeans in tall fit perfectly. Especially the ones that are made to rise higher in the back than the front: thank you!

Now, I'm pretty sure this is not the type of low-rise jean Windhazel refers to, so let me share my theory on clothing manufacturers. Years ago, let's say we're nearing the decade mark, a strange thing happened. Analysts pinpointed that the highest amount of buying power came from the teenage range, particularly females between the ages of about 15-23, and surpassed both the young professionals demographic and the middle age female category. At the same time, Prozac started becoming overprescribed to young females (who were probably suffering from PMS but were misdiagnosed with depression) and Prozac and like anti-depressants makes you gain weight in the stomach region. So, as girls were hitting puberty, their bellies grew and their hips did not, and women with hips were buying less. So certain big manufacturers (the Gap is who I would call the worst offender, follwed closely by Abercrombie, J.Crew, and the Limited brand companies) began slowly changing the fit of their clothes to widen the waist and narrow the hips of women's pants. Since apparently they could not find a waist to sit the band on, they just gave up and said "if we make them so they fit lower, we can put smaller sizes in them b/c of the waistband measurement, and create value by making women feel they are smaller". And since the Gap, Abercrombie, and above mentioned stores were driving the retail market at the time, other retailers followed suit. Or so my theory.

But there's good news, Windhazel and those others that fear ultra low rise supremacy: recently the mid-range female category retook the top posting and is having a resurgence, and super high rise styles were featured in recent spring runway shows. I think we can proudly say that while the mom-jean is not back, women that want jeans to fit are making their voice heard with buying power and choosing jeans made by retailers like Eddie Bauer, J.Jill, and Lee. So, we will survive. And those nasty bad retailers that pushed pubic-rise jeans on us: they're about to do their time. Gap essentially lost it's base market (young professionals) just as they (YP's) started to make money, and to regain customers they are spending ALL of their money on Advertising instead of quality clothing, which means they are now selling at a much higher markdown rate and losing bottom line. Abercrombie's numbers are not nearly where they used to be b/c the surge in guest-service-focused companies means their "brand-representative" as opposed to "sales associate" approach is simply not working, and when was the last time you saw a line at The Limited?

posted by: Cannonball14 at 16:53 | link | comments (4) |
meow, the retail beast

I'm back, and no longer single. That's right, I left my fiance at the alter and ran off to Siberia where I fell in love with and immediately married an Eskimo. After all, I already had the dress.

Kidding. My wedding was perfect, beautiful, and we were not nervous at all, just excited. Everyone has been telling us that we were the happiest couple they had seen at a wedding in a while! We had an enjoyable, but too-short honeymoon, and are back in the daily grind now.

Best present ever: my sister came over while we were in CA and cleaned our entire home. It was a wreck before and we got to come home to a clean and serene living space. What could be better?

Oh yes, coming home to a fully staffed management team and good reports of their performance all around!

posted by: Cannonball14 at 17:47 | link | comments (8) |
bridezilla

Well, I truly hope that this is my last post before I am a married woman. God knows I can't take anything else at this point without breaking down and crying, and then taking a really long nap. So, the last little bit of drama to share with you: my best friend, who is very responsible and normally calm and even-keel, called me from Harlem 12 hours before she was supposed to board a plane to NC to let me know that her boyfriend had disappeared. Her very straight laced, quiet, Muslim boyfriend. It's not like he was going to go out on a drinking binge or anything, and she was very concerned. So, I was freaking out, she was calling hospitals, and we were both wondering how to find a missing person in the biggest city in the country. Luckily for all of us, it turned out he was arrested in an undercover sting operation on his store. Yeah, for selling knock-offs in Queens...like that's a rarity. It's amazing that you can't get arrested for selling a fake Prada handbag, but you can get arrested for claiming that it's a real Prada handbag. How does that work, really? Freaking drama. From the one person I would have counted on to not have any drama in her life, too!

posted by: Cannonball14 at 21:12 | link | comments (1) |
bridezilla