Caveat Lector

Because (remarkably) both the article due next week and the Repo Fringe talk are in moderately decent shape, I took a three-day weekend so we could do the car-rental thing. (Enterprise has nifty half-off weekend specials, but you have to rent for three days.)

So I says to myself, I says, Self, you are doing your very first keynote ever. This is not a small thing. It will not kill you to buy a new dress for it. I knew what I wanted, and a few minutes’ looking around online yielded the apparel stores’ name for it: “jacket dress.” I don’t look good in these things, because I don’t look good in anything, really, but I look as good as I’m gonna. I knew I wanted it in a summerweight fabric, as my wardrobe is (understandably, but even so) oriented toward wearability in the Frozen North.

Coldwater Creek came up dry; their designers have moved a little way away from my preferences, though I can still sometimes find something I’ll wear from them. Other usual suspects, likewise. So I went to… the mall. Let me tell you, greater love hath no woman for a conference than this.

Sears had nothing even slightly suitable, but I hadn’t really expected them to. It was Boston Store that really set my eyebrows climbing. The 1970s were not a sterling era for American women’s fashion, especially considering its colors and prints. Why, why, why do they seem to be making a comeback? Is it the economy? What? Because ugh, stuff I wouldn’t wear on a dare, even on Halloween.

And then there’s the prevailing wisdom that goes something like this: Fat Women Do Not Want Pretty Clothes. Seriously, that’s all I can figure, because whoa the ugly, it burns. Ugly colors. Ugly prints. Ugly cuts that flatter no one. These stores, they take their ugly seriously.

I did see one dress that I could have bought. It wasn’t a jacket dress, but it was in a tasteful plum with a subtle print in gold and olive, and it would have traveled well, and it was okay. I made note of it in case all else failed.

I then walked past all the morons who had hours to burn waiting in line for a new iPhone into JC Penney. Penney’s and I have a history, which is why I saved it for last; someone in their buyer’s department seems to know what I’m desperately looking for and won’t find anywhere else, everything from a honeymoon nightdress to my fleece cloak to… well, let me tell it.

The women’s department actually had jacket dresses, but I didn’t really like their selection. Sigh. I was walking out, reorienting myself so I could find the exit, when I saw it. Jacket dress. Short-sleeved, summerweight georgette. I’m washable, proclaimed a tag on the sleeve (I avoid dry-clean-only clothes when I can). Muted greens and golds in an abstract pattern on an olive base, very tasteful. Well, look at that, not made in China. And it was the last one on the rack.

No way. No way is it my size. Two up or two down, that’s the rule for these things.

Go figure. It was in my size. Tried it on, liked, ganked. And it cost about half what the purple number at Boston Store woulda.

I hope the Repo Fringe folks are grateful, though. I have SHOPPED for you people. Sheesh.