Remember when there were only three brands of jeans? And finding the right fit meant washing them until they shrank so tight you might as well have been naked? Or dry cleaning them for fear that washing would shrink them? Now, there are dozens of brands, but getting a good fit is still more difficult than locating a legal parking space in mid-town Manhattan. If the hips fit, the waist gaps. If the jeans slim your tummy, they give you the dreaded muffin top.
During a stay in London back in the early 1970s, I took an innocent side-trip to Leeds to visit my dressmaker friend Anne, who shared my passion for fashion. Already on day one, we went shopping—at a church bazaar. And there on a long table piled with tangled heaps of old clothes, my eye caught a shimmering morsel of chocolate brown brocade. I tugged, and out came a stunning, mesmerizing, perfect-condition ’30s dress, complete with ecru lace trim, fabric belt, and delicate little kick-pleat on the slim skirt. Nirvana! Looking like it would fit, it soon became mine for about three bucks (these goods were sold by the pound). I was hooked!
Last week I got a pair of Lucky jeans, a Banana Republic top and a great BCBG Max Azria sequined little black dress...and it didn’t cost me a penny.
I pride myself on being a savvy shopper. During my teenage years, when I became interested in style, my mother taught me how to navigate bargain basements, tag sales, church fairs, bazaars, flea markets, and thrift shops.
Remember those ultra-spiky high heels that came to the fore a couple of seasons ago—and had even the sveltest of supermodels wobbling like toddlers? Well, when fashion goes to one extreme, it often produces a swift and vengeful backlash to the other. Enter sneakers, the cloddish shoe du jour—so ungainly in fact that while researching this article I had trouble distinguishing grown-up styles from children’s. (In fact the two are identical.) Nevertheless, not only have sneakers emerged in recent years as street smart lifestyle choices for hip-hop artists and Millennials, but now they’ve morphed into chic yet (mostly) affordable fashion statements.
My New York fashion shopping memories go way back—to the late ‘60s, when the Youthquake was gathering force, street fashion ignited like wildfire, and a dynamic new breed of accessible clothing boutiques arrived as if on cue. Remember Charivari, Grand Hotel/Tales of Hoffmann, and later on, Dianne B. and If? These medium-size shops, with their dizzying arrays of up-and-coming designers, held a magnetic appeal for fashion-forward New Yorkers. But by the mid-’90s, they vanished—victims of corporate fashion stores and zooming rents. Yes, Barneys, Jeffrey, and Kirna Zabete duly showcase the high-flying mega-designers these days—but their stock is too often ostentatious, to say nothing of stratospherically priced.
