I did wind up going shopping Saturday. (and also finally mowing and edging the yard - that was a big job with all the rain we'd had).

And once again: yay Lane Bryant! Yay for not making me cry, for having clothes that not only fit me but don't make me look like a freak.

I had gone out looking for a dress. Tried "Dress Barn" first. You can tell it's a year when dresses are apparently out of favor by TPTB when a store called Dress Barn has only a few dresses, and most of them semi-formals at that.

But right in the door of Lane Bryant, there were three dresses lined up - two being the sort of formless knit dresses that I know women of fluctuating size like. But my size remains pretty constant, so I prefer something more fitted.

And they had one! It was a purplish blue - sort of a deep periwinkle - and the design strikes me as being a bit 1940s-inspired, with some bustline detail. (It's on their website, here. But in real life it looks more purple and less blue to me). I took the smallest size (and I admit, that's a bit of vanity there for me: it's nice to walk into a store and take the smallest size off the rack, rather than the biggest) and tried it on.

It fit perfectly. (Actually, it seems more fitted on me than the one on that model does; it seems to accentuate my waist and doesn't make my bust look huge but still makes me look feminine). So it doesn't match with the new sweater I knit - I don't really care. It looked good on me. (And yeah, it was kind of expensive, at least for me for dresses, but I bought it).

Because I looked good in it. Oh, no, I didn't look Hot - I don't think Hotness is a part of my make-up, and I also think it's actually not a look I wish to aspire to - but I looked professional and pretty and well-pulled-together. (And the dress should go well with some of my jewelry, and probably some of my shawls).

I also bought a pair of jeans.

One thing Lane Bryant does, is they have three different "cuts" - either straight up-and-down, "moderately curvy" (which I chose) or "very curvy." The design of the jeans is such that the rise in the back is higher - and it seems to eliminate the "swayback" problem I have, where jeans that fit in the hips gap at the waist.

I will say their re-sizing of the jeans annoys me a bit. They size slacks from 1 through 8 or so. A 1-2 (which I took) corresponds roughly to a 16 in "real" sizes. I don't like it when manufacturers try to be "cute" with sizing. I KNOW I'm a big woman. Being told I'm a "2" isn't going to make me ignore that fact (though on the other end, I wouldn't appreciate it if some designer decided to resize using, say, animals, and have, say, pigs and hippos and whales to designate the larger sizes. That would be worse.). (I still think it would help if they sized women's slacks with waist-hip-inseam sizing, kind of like how they size men's jeans, only with the added hip measurement). But whatever. The jeans fit better and looked better on than most I've owned, so I'm willing to put up with the clearly-vanity sizing.

The other thing is, I have found on average, the people working in Lane Bryant are more helpful and cheerful than people in most other clothing stores. I don't know if that's a corporate thing, or if the bigger department stores just have more harried help, or what.

I will probably go back at some point when it's time to replace certain, um, nether garments. For years I bought a particular brand but I'm willing to try another.

(They also sell Spanx. I've never tried them but I do have a dress that is sort of clingy and might look better if I was willing to subject myself to a pair of those. I don't know. I keep looking at them in catalogs and keep thinking about how miserable I am wearing even control-top pantyhose. So I don't know.)