If I'd have written this blog 48 hours ago, or even less, like I had been planning to, then it would probably be a whiny rant about the dire state of the British fashion retail outlets and how they seem to completely disregard about 90% of the young female market. Since finishing Japanese (woohoo!!!) and my weekend off (more about that later, maybe) I intended to resume my textiles revision. Instead, I have spent a large part of the last week trying to finally find a dress for my upcoming leavers ball. To be perfectly honest, I had practically given up before the week began and was mentally preparing myself to make a dress, and to be honest I was actually looking forward to it. Never the less, since my nanny was over from Ireland I tried once more to find a dress.
Well let me tell you, I would never have guessed dress shopping would be so stressful! It has been the bane of my life for past month! First of all, I have trawled my local shops (no surprises there wasn't much there) then moved onto London and Westfield, which I made several trips to at various points in the year, and finally a nearby large shopping center. What I found was a severe lack of dresses suitable (at least what I or my parents deemed as suitable) for a ball. The few dresses that were suitable were well over £300 or even £500. There were a few mid range dresses that were about £200, but paying that for a glorified evening dress seems a bit steep for me. Then, the odd time I did find a gem they didn't have my size. Typical.
Oh, I said this wouldn't be a ranty blog, let me get back to the point. Well, Murphy's law, yesterday I ended up going back to my local shop and buying a dress I'd tried on there weeks ago. It is an amazing dress and, thanks to some haggling due to a broken zip, it only cost £48! Why didn't I buy it in the first place, the males among you may ask. Females might understand; the truth is, it was nice on me the first time I tried it on but, since I hadn't looked at much else at the time, I thought I'd find something better. Going back to it after weeks of joyless shopping I realised how amazing it really was, and since they still had my size (2 of them!) after all these weeks it must have been fate.
The funniest thing is, the most stressful thing about trying to find a dress is the pressure everyone else seems to put on you. That's why I like shopping alone, or at least with a friend who understands. Having to justify every time why you don't want to even bother looking in "Jacques Vert" or the like (for the last time, 18 year old's don't shop there!!!) or why you don't want to buy a dress that fits you and they think looks nice, gets extremely tiring, much more so than trying the actual dresses on! Maybe it's just me, maybe a future fashion designer in the making is the hardest person to go shopping with. In fact, that's exactly the thing, isn't it? I said earlier about how I had resigned myself to making my own dress, I had in fact a few sketches already penned. I would still love to make these dresses, they were pretty amazing, if I must say so myself! Anyway, they were at the back of my head the whole time, I even knew exactly where I'd buy the fabric and knowing that it would cost about 10% of the price was an attractive feature! So I basically compared every dress I tried on to that, so of course nothing could beat it!
It's really got me thinking, the UK needs a prom dress supplier, not like those cheesy, tacky American ones though, that the average teenage girl can ship at, ie not over £200, under £100 even. Something that sells long formal gowns, and shorter flouncy prom dresses, and everything in between. There are too many retailers bringing out the same old dresses every year. Oh and another thing I noticed, considering the fact that girls going to these leaving balls are between 16 and 18 years old, why are there so many so called "prom dresses" that look like frumpy bridesmaid dresses, that age you so much? You're only 18 once and there'll be plenty of opportunities to wear more serious dresses in the future. I think there is a serious gap in the market there!
I have rambled for waaay to long, more about my amazing weekend next time, I'm off to catch up on Mock The Week and have some coffee cake!
Lyric of the Day: "Haven't you people ever heard of closing a goddamm door?" - I Write Sins Not Tragedies, Panic! At The Disco
No comments:
Post a Comment