STOPSHOP 6: Cincinnati

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
Dear Reader

I am so sorry I have not been in touch recently. I do enjoy our time together on this blog, but sadly I have nothing to talk about. Partly there's nothing much to report: I'm not shopping.... er, that's it; partly I'm too lazy an old baggage to think of something diverting to write when there's a glass of wine and 'The Killing' available. Mostly I put it down to the fact that since February I have spent quite a lot of time in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Let me tell you about Cincinnati. The pilots who fly there from Newark (hardly the Garden of Eden itself, by the way) amuse themselves by accidentally calling it  'Cincinnasty'. I bought my son at t shirt at the airport,  "Cincinnati - nothing to do and all day to do it in", so at least it's a town that doesn't take itself too seriously.
As I grew up in the mill towns of the North West I'm pretty tolerant on the municipal architecture front. "Proud Preston", Lancashire is my home town. It is an unlovely squiggle of ring roads. In the middle is a handful of fiercely scrubbed emblems of Victorian civic pride. There is also, drum roll, Europe's (second) biggest bus station (a brutalist concrete spaceship, so thanks for that Ove Arup). An American friend, passing through and curious to check out my roots, rang to ask if it had been badly bombed during the war. Hardly at all - we made it look like that all by ourselves.
Truth to tell, Preston was never much of a looker to start with, all red brick terraces and parched pea stands. But Cinci used to be a real hotty. When Charles Dickens visited in 1842, he took quite a shine to the place. He wrote:
"Cincinnati is only fifty years old, but is a very beautiful city; I think the prettiest place I have seen here, except Boston. It has risen out of the forests like an Arabian night city; it is well laid out; ornamented in the suburbs with pretty villas; and, above all, for this is a rare feature in America, has smooth turf-plots and well kept gardens."
As I've already mentioned, I'm not in a position to throw stones architecturally speaking. but Cincinnati hasn't aged well. Nowadays, downtown Cincinnati makes Preston town centre look like the Piazza Navona. To give you an impression, imagine a town centre made entirely of large multi storey carparks. That's Cinci. Only some of the car parks are hotels.

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE:

Piazza Navona, Roma

Proud Preston, Hub of the North

4th Street Cincinnati

It has taken me a while to settle on my hotel of choice. It is The Cincinnatian (there were nasty rumours of bed bugs in the others). It sits slap bang in what I now know to call (thanks to various GCSE Geography coursework crises) the CBD and it is a very odd place. It prides itself on its atrium and reception (see below for a glimpse of the prevailing aesthetic); the rooms are huge but seldom have a socket for a laptop or phone charger; often the minibar fridge isn't plugged in. I have issues with the windows. Call me conventional, but I do like a window to, well, look out on something. The Cincinnatian doesn't hold with that. Any room lucky enough to face outside will have its window set high up in the wall, filled with darkened glass. There will be no window sill - which gives the room a disconcerting, alien look, like a face without eyebrows.  Many rooms do have huge windows opening onto balconies, but they look down on the atrium. No natural light penetrates. The cumulative effect is unsettling. You climb into bed surveying the room anxiously, like a patient in a sleep clinic - it looks ordinary enough but something isn't quite right.  People are probably watching.

The atrium in The Cincinnatian

 

However, for the Stopped Shopper, a base in central Cincinnati couldn't be better. There are shops around and about - there's a Saks 5th Avenue sign on the sky line which suggests there is a Saks store somewhere, unless it is a cruel joke and is simply advertising the real Saks on the actual 5th Avenue. But the neighbourhood around The Cincinnatian does little to set the shopper's pulse racing. There's a gentlemen's hat shop - never open - called Batsakes (why?) and there's a Walgreens drug store. The latter serves as an unofficial soup kitchen for the town's more colourf'ul inhabitants in the daytime. After 7pm it doubles as a casting call for a George Romero film.
Last time I was there, the itch to shop plagued me like retail athlete's foot. I was working all day. Batsakes was closed (of course) - so Walgreens was all I had left. It wasn't a bad choice - I do love an American drug store. A definition of drugs which encompasses notebooks, novelty plasters, teeth whitening strips, Hallowe'en outfits and bottles of booze covers most of my vices. But I had barely got past the novelty nail extensions, when my browsing was disturbed by the store manager chasing a customer down the cosmetic aisle; wrestling him to the ground by his hair and shouting (whilst banging his head on the floor), "This (BANG) is the last (BANG) goddam time (BANG) you come in here (BANG) and take my frickin' stuff (BANG BANG BANG)". I curtailed my visit after another fellow shopper started standing behind me, making mewing noises and trying to stroke my face.
So Cinci is often where I get into some serious online shopping. It's quite thrilling, sitting in a hotel room three thousand miles from home and knowing that new stuff is being boxed up and sent to you. It's something to look forward to after the red eye - some nice Netaporter boxes waiting at home, rather than an empty fridge and a smelly fox terrier. In this shopping free year my internet shopping days are supposedly over. But it seems I forgot to tell the retailers.
I'm not a complete mug. I usually tick the box on the website that says "please don't hawk my name for cash to your random selection of so-called valued partners". But just as I always press "update now" for every iTunes upgrade, so I always check "accept terms and conditions" without reading the fifteen pages of 8 point type that accompany them. It is clear there are loop holes I am not spotting. My name seems to be on almost every list going. I reckon, based on my previous behaviour, they can probably charge a premium for it - "Oh, HER! Didn't she sink a load of money in that dodgy sale. She'll buy anything! You can bin those other five hundred thousand names - that's my monthly target made right there"
As a result, checking my Inbox is like wandering through the Soukh in a pound note overcoat: extra discount this, special price that, urgent bulletins from every fashion retailer from ASOS to Yoox.
Just the other day Toast emailed to let me on the secret that it's now Spring - a season, in the world of Toast, of droopy, sepia clothes, draped over droopy anaemic women. Much like Toast Winter and Summer then.

Droopy Toast lady - does this say Spring to you?

Netaporter were screaming about "Going mad for bags"; Uniqlo were chirpy, "Hey Girls, check out our summer dress extravaganza"; J Crew had another one off, never to be repeated warehouse sale (like last week and the week before). Clarks shoes, frankly, must be confusing me with someone who gives a damn about comfort and flexibility in my footwear and Amazon, well, I'm thinking of taking out a court order against them. My sons hack into my account to buy gangsta rap, roots reggae, manga books and nunchucks, so the suggestions they send to me daily are rarely all that appealing.
Some retailers have noticed that we're not as close as we once were and they are just plain needy. All those wheedling "what's happened to us, it used to be so great between us, but now you just seem so distant" messages. Oh, Johnnie Boden. It's not you, it's me. I need my space. You deserve better. I'm just no good for you. I just want a break, that's all.
Don't tell Johnnie, but there is somebody else. A couple of them actually. I may have stopped checking out every site, but I haven't totally given up on my favourites. Look in the right place, and you'll find teeny little trolley icons that I am tending carefully. Just shopping, you see, without the buying: like smoking without inhaling.
It is, I agree, a little bit tragic. I search through the sites picking items I like and putting them in the cart. I log in a couple of times a week to review the contents. I fret about whether they're the right size or the wrong colour. I swap around the contents a bit. I add another couple of items, a pair of shoes or some jewelry, say, to complete the outfit. And I get furious when I check in and they're not there. The Preciouses! Gone! "Removed from bag", "Out of stock", these are words I do not like to see.
Oh, I've been weak, I don't mind admitting. Once I clicked on 'check out now' just so I could see the lovelies in real life, give them a stroke, put them back in their box and send them back to Netaporter land. (Free postage and packaging, mmmmn.) Don't judge me, you Farmville fans. You may harvest imaginary corn, I harvest imaginary clothes. It's "Fashionville".
Currently I have rather a cool virtual wardrobe online: Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney.....  My digital wardrobe is so much nicer than the manky analogue wardrobe standing in my bedroom. That's full of crumpled skirts and stuff that needs the hems mending. Of course they all started off in a cart online somewhere too. But I turned them from pixels into reality. What a pity I can't turn the reality back into pixels!

STOPSHOP: STOPSHOP 5: New York New York

STOPSHOP: STOPSHOP 5: New York New York: "If there's any place that looses my purse strings, it's New York. I step onto the sidewalk and dollar bills just start flying out of m..."

STOPSHOP 5: New York New York

If there's any place that looses my purse strings, it's New York.  I step onto the sidewalk and dollar bills just start flying out of my wallet. Ever wondered how they afford all that subsidised travel in Manhattan? Thank StopShop's Barney's bills, my friend.
I currently visit New York a great deal for work, and while I have been known to moan about other business destinations (sorry Lagos), it is never a chore to head to NYC. I fly out with my suitcase empty. Yet whatever my schedule, I seldom come back without that suitcase plastered in overweight bag stickers.   
I blame Virgin Atlantic. My personal air travel is modest. A Yorkshire husband and three teenagers sees to that. My usual airport experience sucks: frantically switching belongings between bags while Ryanair check in staff look like they want to beat us with sticks. Not the most relaxing start to a holiday.  Fortunately for work I get to fly Comfort Class so long as the journey's long enough. London to New York is - just.
Most of my colleagues fly with BA Club Class, but I can't do it. From the moment I step into the plane and turn right, I am naggingly aware that richer, more important people are sitting neck deep in cashmere and foie gras a couple of rows away in First Class. The BA staff don't help. They make it all too apparent what a comedown it is to be ministering to us Club proles (whose tickets cost a mere £3000) when they could be hobnobbing with Cheryl Cole behind that curtain.
But Virgin Atlantic has only Upper Class, and in most ways it is well named. They pick you up in a nice car; whisk you to their  extremely nice lounge via your own personal check in and security scanner. Scarlet uniformed staff address you by name. Sometimes you even get to turn left when you enter the plane. But most of all you know that everyone, even Richard Branson himself, sits in the same Upper Class compartment. There's only one better seat on the plane and the captain has that. It's strangely relaxing. We're probably all slumming it in comparison to BA First Class, where for all I know, everyone is massaged from top to toe by swimwear models with PhDs. But at least we aren't tortured by the tantalising glimpse of higher echelons from which we are excluded.
Sorry to gloat but it just gets better: a limo to a NY hotel, where the doormen are good looking, attentive and remember your name. Why, it is enough to turn a shallow feckless woman's head! After that flight and fifteen minutes in downtown Manhattan I'm a whole different person: a slightly famous and rather rich one. Not a helpful frame of mind when wandering around the stores.
This time I arrived in the New York snowpocalyse. I was shockingly under-equipped. I can now say with some authority that a leather jacket and four inch heels, unless accompanied by sealskin tights, is not an outfit to be recommended for deep snow and compacted ice. If a St Bernard dog had seen me it would have drunk its own brandy barrel.
Now, the Artist Formerly Known as NonStop Shop would have immediately hopped into a cab to the nearest antarctic emporium and emerged dressed like Captain Scott. Not so StopShop me. I... and I can hardly believe I am typing these words... made do!
I'm not saying it was glamorous, picking my way across the sidewalks like they were mined. But goodness, it's hard to look in shop windows when you have to focus on not coming face to face with the pavement.
The crunch came at the weekend. Usually, alone in NYC, with only my debit card for company, I often find I have to take it on outings. Occasionally I let it have a little play in Bloomingdales - it loves it there. We might go and visit MOMA. It's not all that keen on the art, but it really enjoys the shop. In and out of stores all day we go until the poor little chap is quite exhausted from sliding and swiping. Then I let him have a little rest and take out his good friend Visa.
But how to get through a whole weekend without shopping? I quickly dismissed the idea of galleries and museums. Not simply because I am a souless philistine,  but since galleries etc cottoned onto the fact that if they put the gift shops at the front of the building, there are fewer queues to see the art, I seldom get past the ticket booth. And I now have that discount card to the MOMA shop. Risky.
So I consulted the locals. Turns out if you live in Manhattan you don't go clothes shopping all weekend. Apparently you do some exercise, see friends and chill out.
For a true New York experience a friend recommended David Barton's "Look Good Naked" gym.  Frankly this is not my kind of objective. Naked is a condition in which I aim to spend as little time as possible. That's what clothes are for. "Look Good in Acne Leather Leggings", that's my motto.

Surprisingly it turns out that clothes feature quite heavily in David Barton. Instead of the intimidating Sue Sylvester types you see on reception at a British gym, David Barton is full of people who do their best to look they have nothing to do with exercise at all. Instead, the overall look is as if they're working the bar at the Brixton Academy.  At reception they have a clothes store. It sells Vivienne Westwood shoes - some have six inch heels. (not something I remember Miss Reddy, my PE teacher, wearing). Up in the main gym, where there is a giant disco ball and a DJ booth, several people were working out in outdoor shoes, jeans and hats -  not beanies or baseball caps - trilbies!  It is the campest place I have ever exercised in. - and I've been to the Pineapple Dance Studio.

Hence I was less surprised by the class timetable: "ASSolutely ABBulous"; "Six-Pack Attack!", "Pain & Pleasure", "Fight Club" and more mysteriously, "Melt", "Gravity Surfing" and "Shredded".  I was in time for "Rope Attack" led by a mean faced, shouty bloke in construction boots and jeans with a rope. It was hard to tell if he was going to lead the class or take one of us hostage. Thankfully it turned out to be a skipping class.  Next day I was reassured enough to go to "Ass Blast".
What with ass blasting and rope burning, seeing friends and even chilling out, the weekend passed off, extremely enjoyably, if not cheaply and with little actual shopping. At the end of it I was relaxed, refreshed and, yes, pretty damn smug. I must confess to one purchase however. But it is one I can recommend to you all: fleece lined tights. Warm as toast and and only twenty bucks. The perfect accompaniment to a short dress and a leather jacket for any antarctic explorer.

STOPSHOP: STOPSHOP 1: New Years Resolutions and all that

STOPSHOP: STOPSHOP 1: New Years Resolutions and all that: "It was after the third mywardrobe.com box had arrived for me this Christmas that the idea for this blog crossed my mind. I love buying cloth..."

STOPSHOP: Bearing gifts...

STOPSHOP: Bearing gifts...: "Great excitment at StopShop Towers yesterday morning when Husband (he whose entire wardrobe fits onto seven coathangers) flung two large Fed..."

STOPSHOP: STOPSHOP 3: The Paris of the North

STOPSHOP: STOPSHOP 3: The Paris of the North: "For most fashionistas, the perfect location for a shopping weekend would be Paris. For me, it's Preston, Lancashire. True the boulevar..."

STOPSHOP: STOPSHOP 4: Are earrings clothes and other philoso...

STOPSHOP: STOPSHOP 4: Are earrings clothes and other philoso...: "Freed from the demands of shopping, StopShop has become a reflective, contemplative creature - like Bertrand Russell but in higher heels. Ve..."

STOPSHOP 4: Are earrings clothes and other philosophical questions....

Freed from the demands of shopping, StopShop has become a reflective, contemplative creature - like Bertrand Russell but in higher heels. Vexing questions fill my thoughts. Why did I give up shopping? What will happen when I start shopping again? (Not that I'm counting but that's less than 50 weeks away) What else is there on the Internet other than shopping? I day dream loopholes in my self-imposed fashion famine. Oh I know. I'm only cheating myself - but who else would I want to cheat? If I devoted as much attention to the loopholes in the small print of my credit card bills, I'd be rich enough to buy those bigger wardrobes. 
So, conundrum number one: in the last week or so I have had three fashion A&E cases: mostly washing related casualties. Non StopShop me would bow to the forces of fashion entropy and look forward to replacing them. But StopShop? Surely she is made of thriftier stuff?
First to require resuscitation were my Houlihan Stealth jeans. Very proud of these I was. Limited edition. Bought in NY in an inaccurate but pleasingly small size, thanks to vanity sizing and added lycra. This combination has meant I have been wearing them as much as possible - chiefly because they are so small I'm terrified that if I put them away for a few weeks I won't be able to get them above my knees. Then with the tentative first wash, disaster struck. I stuck to the letter of the washing instructions, honest I did. I even switched the machine to its most delicate cycle,  as gentle as a mother cat cleaning her kittens. Yet despite all this, pre-wash they had a sexy sheen like leather; post wash they are the colour and texture of the contents of a Hoover bag.  

Before (point of clarification: NOT modelled by me....):

Next up was a white Vivienne Westwood shirt, accidentally stuffed into the machine along with the usual industrial quantities of white laundry. Curse that blue bandanna!
Even more heartbreaking was the large four inch rent I noticed in the back of my best coat. I love this coat. It was a lot of money (in a sale, naturellement, mes cheries) but I justified it as an heirloom, to be handed it down on my deathbed to my weeping daughter ("Here's a moth eaten old coat, darling, that Mummy's worn to death. Take it with my blessing. Sorry there are no diamonds. I spent all the money in TK Maxx"). That was a 999 moment:  someone call a doctor - we need stitches here - my legacy is at stake!
So my fashion assets are diminishing just when I've stopped refreshing the inventory.  Sadly, I think I'll be switching off the life support on the Houlihans (although I feel aggrieved and entitled to a new pair - yes, Intermix, Spring Street New York, you may be seeing these dustbunnies soon). Not all is lost: I reckon I can save the Westwood shirt with a soak in bleach and if all else fails a Dylon machine dye. By hook or by crook, that coat's going to make it: I just have to get round to finding someone who can perform the requisite surgery.
There is something that pleases me enormously about having things repaired. Please note the use of the passive voice. I hate repairing things myself. When I repair things they inevitably tear, split and erupt like they're contracted clothing psoriasis on the very next wear. I consider my approach to mending pragmatic, dare I say innovative? Bored of threading a needle and sewing up a loose hem? StopShop says reach for the sellotape instead (and give that garment an intriguing crackle no one will quite be able to place every time you wear it). Forget It bags, get yourself an It stapler. Carefully used, it is a fashion must have. A colleague of my husband's once revealed he had replaced the holey pockets in his trousers by stapling Tesco plastic bags in their place. Practical, capacious AND waterproof. Genius!  If I liked this coat less I would definitely have a go at dabbing it back together with superglue - but only if the Pritt Stick didn't work first.
So if mending is ok for the Stopped Shopper, what about remodelling. A couple of years ago a good friend (Suzanne, you know I'm talking about you), recommended I take some old stuff to Junky Styling, a hip East London combo specialising in using old clothes to make new ones. Ever since I have had a large bag ready and waiting for them to work their magic. This year in particular, the idea of outfits rising phoenix-like from a couple of bags of old grot sounds very exciting. But is this true to the StopShop ethos? I haven't quite decided.
Let's see how desperate I get as the year goes by and the charms of shopping my shrinking closet start to pall.  I can't see me going all Gok Wan and revamping my old outfits with an exotic new belt or scarf, so I think I'm safe from excessive belt and scarf spending: a) I don't believe an outfit is transformed by a new belt or a scarf. It just looks like the same outfit with, well, a new belt or a scarf.  And b) scarves and I don't get on. However artlessly draped they look in the shop, back home I look as if I've just escaped from the Boston Strangler.
But the thing that preys on my mind most are earrings. Do they count as clothing or do they not? There is a pair of earrings that I noticed (on an Internet shopping site) before Christmas. Only last week that same site let me know that they had been reduced by 90 (that's nine oh) percent - scarcely more than the price of a cinema ticket. Earrings remember. Not clothes. Teeny weeny wardrobe footprint. Taking up no hanger space belonging to husband. They could share digs with all their other earring kind: on my bathroom shelf, or (for reasons I can't fathom) in the fruit bowl downstairs. Virtually invisible.  Ok. It's confession time. I came. I saw. I popped them into my virtual basket. But with my finger hovering over "proceed to payment" doubt struck. Surely stuff that dangles from your ear lobes is even more frivolous and unnecessary than clothing - after all clothes do fulfil a basic human need. Even page 3 of the Daily Telegraph hasn't yet reported women dying of exposure because of bare ears.
On the other hand they would be a small and cheering purchase. So there they sit in the virtual basket, waiting for someone else to save me from temptation, or for me to be up late browsing the Internet one night on this week's business trip, a glass of wine at my elbow and suddenly think "Sod it, life's too short, I want them. Send them NOW!"
What I am clear about is that functional practical things are not be included in StopShop - new tights, haircuts, camping equipment, that kind of thing. Stuff I need. But obviously I have to need them in a 'this is really necessary' way, rather than a 'my god those Houlihans are so much cheaper in Intermix than in Harvey Nix, I really need them'  way.  Trouble is I'm not much good at telling the difference.
So to be on the safe side I've found myself drawn to the ugly and functional as a way of making sure I'm not kidding myself. For example, I have become strangely fixated on this bag. Sensible, practical, pleasant and not terribly glamorous, it is a nun amongst bags. But if I'm going to invest in a bag at all then surely it may as well be an attractive one? I hear good things about the Prada nylon back pack (not the price which is a mere £500 for the real deal or £100 from a website in China).  But Prada luggage is hardly in the spirit of StopShop. It would be like deciding to stop shopping and having the hallway decorated in mink wallpaper.
Mother Superior, below, is a more reasonable £60 on Amazon (actually it is £69.99 but I generally follow the mathematical rounding rule taught to me at my mother's knee: if you are buying something for yourself always round down to the nearest £10, unless it costs over £150 when you may round down to the nearest hundred. However, when buying for someone else, or gossiping about profligate shopping friends, always round up).

I've wavered and vacillated about this stupid bag so much that Amazon have started sending me stalking, 'you know you want it, it's here, come and buy it, it wants to come home with you' emails.... Sod it. Life's too short. I don't want it. Don't send it now!

STOPSHOP 3: The Paris of the North

For most fashionistas, the perfect location for a shopping weekend would be Paris.  For me, it's Preston, Lancashire. True the boulevards (Fishergate and Friargate) don't quite match up to the Champs Elysees or Saint Honore. But can you find a TK Maxx, a Primark, Debenhams (and the now sadly defunct Ethel Austin) virtually next door to each other on the Boulevard Haussman? I think not.
Preston, I should explain, is my home town. And as many of my family of clothes-obsessed shoppers are still based there, it has been the scene of much thoughtless female frittering, the fruits of which are currently clogging up my shelves. It is an undistinguished looking Northern mill town belted by ring roads (an American friend stopping off there en route for Scotland once phoned me in horror: "I'm in your home town. Was it really badly bombed in the War?"  No, I had to tell her. We did all that ourselves), but it is on the borders of some of the most beautiful scenery in the North of England. It's handy for the Lake District; right on the doorstep of the Forest of Bowland; within striking distance of the Yorkshire Dales. Many Prestonians use this to the full - they spend their leisure time heading North to romp in our great national parks. We head the other way to queue in the carparks of the great retail outlet parks. In fact when my family go up to the Lakes, we often don't get much further than the giant Lakeland Plastics superstore at Windermere.
So it was with some caution that StopShop stepped off the train at Preston railway station last weekend, accompanied by teenage daughter. The official reason for the trip was to see the folks and hand over (and hopefully receive) Christmas booty, but I have never been up there and not come back with a bag full of bargains. For StopShop a weekend in Preston would be like running over hot coals. Sadly we arrived with time to spare. Hmmm. Where IS there to wile away an hour or so close to the station? I know Primark and TK Maxx. Brilliant!
Primark and I have a vexed relationship.  On so many levels I disapprove of it - some of them ethical but most of them aesthetic. The minute I step into the store I become all designery and fey -  twirling a virtual green carnation and looking down my nose. Not quite comme il faut, don't you know. All that viscose. Hard to explain, then, that almost every bra I own comes from Primark. If I get knocked over by a car, the paramedics will think my name is Secret Possessions.  No surprise then, that within ten minutes of leaving the train I was being restrained by my daughter from buying yet another pair of cotton flannel pyjamas (in the cutest black and white polka dots and only FIVE POUNDS!!!). "Mum, StopShop means not shopping, remember?"
Primark had a strange effect on her too. I love the way she and her friends dress. They have that easy, North London teenage style - layers thrown together seemingly effortlessly. I find artless impossible. When Anna Wintour scornfully derided "matchy matchy" styling a small part of me died. I love matchy matchy. It's like solving a crossword - you know you've got it right. If I wear more than two colours at once I think I look like a crazy lady, with a dog on a string and a shopping trolley full of junk, shouting at passersby and scratching my crotch in public. In order to avoid this, I do perhaps take things a little far:  even my underwear matches my outerwear.
But back to Primark. I can only conclude that the mind-altering chemicals in the airconditioning at Primark were particularly concentrated last Friday afternoon in the Preston branch, because the very daughter who was so sneery about the, yes I have to admit, BOLD, shoes I returned last week, was soon rifling through the racks trying to find her size in a polyester fleece all in one pyjama cow suit, (complete with feet, pink belly, hooves and a hood with a cow face).
 
Later we were in my mum's house, exchanging Christmas presents. In her prime my mum was to shopping what Kenya is to marathon running - a woman so dedicated to bargains she is prepared to jab her feet into any shoes from size 3 to size 6 1/2 - keeps her options open on the sale racks. Technically I think she's a size 5. I don't get to see her feet very often but I imagine that by now they look like the inside of a lava lamp.
You would think that being the eldest daughter of such a shopping superstar would reap dividends at Christmas. Reader you would be wrong. My mother has long seen Christmas as the perfect opportunity to offload some of the more glaring shopping mistakes she has made in previous years. Attempts to return items to the store from which they purport to come, usually attract a crowd of shop assistants to view them. "My goodness. I remember those. Didn't we have those five years ago? Fetch May from the staff room, she's been here the longest. May, come and see what this woman's brought in...."
One Summer my mother called me to complain about some silk pyjamas she'd had someone bring back from Hong Kong.  She'd been imagining Katherine Hepburn. She'd ended up with Bruce Lee. What a laugh we had about the nasty things  - how badly they fit, how low they hung in the crotch, the lurid colour, the giant golden dragon . "Just give them away" I remember suggesting, wiping tears of hilarity from my eyes.....  Guess what I unwrapped that Christmas morning?
So the trepidation I felt last Friday when she handed me my Christmas parcel was considerable.  Mum hadn't done her usual pre Xmas call to ask me what I want. That meant she'd gone completely off piste. Then she told it me it was just my kind of thing and my heart sank. Mum hasn't really understood "my thing" since we argued about me growing my fringe out twenty years ago. It must be something to wear. Clearly she hadn't consulted my sister (who has very good taste) either - damn!
Here it is:

So it's off to M&S for me, to send the staff on a trip down Memory Lane. Not that they'll own up to it. The Per Una label is suspiciously slashed - the true sign of an Outlet buy, and there are no other visible labels. Hmm. I'd better just give it away. Watch out all of you. If you're a size 10 and enjoy looking like you've been coloured in with Sharpies, it could be heading your way!

Bearing gifts...

Great excitment at StopShop Towers yesterday morning when Husband (he whose entire wardrobe fits onto seven coathangers) flung two large FedEx boxes into my lap saying "Going well this Stop Shop thing I see!".
Sigh. Useless to explain.  For an intelligent man he has a total mental block about the most elementary logic around shopping. These items were ordered them before StopShop. Ipso vero, just because they happened to arrive after doesn't make them part of the StopShop rules. As Einstein put it time is all relative (or was that Dr Who?). QED!
Anyway of course I didn't own up that I have been virtually up at the window whining for these boxes like a pining dog. Nor that knowing that they were on their way has been why I have been able to chuck every tempting 70% reduction sale notice airily into the bin.
So after sliding said boxes to the floor with studied negligence until husband left the room, I waited until he was safely out of earshot, then fell upon them.
A couple of minutes later, when the mushroon cloud of sticky tape, torn cardboard and tissue paper had settled I was in possession of: one pair small stud earrings for daughter (to replace ones bought her for Christmas, one of which leapt out of her ear and down the nearest crack in the floor boards about ten minutes into Christmas morning); similar for myself (ok they were a about the same price as a capuccino); a strangely draped dress (much reduced) - one of the "weekend" dresses referenced in an earlier post and a pair of somewhat surprising shoes.
It was good that these shoes arrived at this early point in my StopShop campaign. I think they were A Sign.
For a start, they had clearly been ordered, probably on my iPhone, at a boring bit in a Christmas film, after several glasses of white wine, in the spirit of there's life in the old dog yet. As Graham Norton would no doubt wisely remark. "Cab here for Mrs Mutton!"
If I say that their main colours are purple, neon orange and silver, I think you will feel more sorrow than disappointment at my lapse in taste.
But truth to tell, they would probably be sitting amongst all the other oddities in my 'It's because no one else wants them they're so cheap" collection, were it not for the fact that by some supernatural intervention by the Stop Shopping Gods, the retailer had sent me the wrong size.
Reader, how proud I would be to tell you all that I simply shrugged my shoulders, patiently packaged them up and trotted down to the post office to return them.
But I did not.
I wriggled, squirmed and jabbed my oversized tootsies into them like one of the Ugly Sisters. I tried them on with thin socks, thinner tights, no socks at all. I hobbled around my bedroom in them like a pig in heels. It was no good. They looked like two garish balloon animals, full of walnuts.
Finally after a protracted conversation whilst the customer service department explained to me that out of stock means literally there are no more shoes, I gave up,  patiently packaged them up and trotted down to the post office etc etc.
I felt better almost immediately after I had shown a picture of them to my daughter and she'd stopped laughing.
But the shopping gremlin inside me has planted a seed of a thought that somehow I am owed a pair of shoes. Thank goodness I am out of town for that Manolo Blahnik sale.....

STOPSHOP 1: New Years Resolutions and all that

It was after the third mywardrobe.com box had arrived for me this Christmas that the idea for this blog crossed my mind.
I love buying clothes. I seriously do. Left to my own devices barely a week goes by without me picking up some little thing or other. I love shopping. I love the whole process of trying things on. I daydream about how and where I will showcase my new gladrags.
My passion is enabled by a job that involves a lot of travel (I never seem to have packed quite the right items of clothes, thus necessitating 'essential' purchases en route - and it's always sale season somewhere); a husband who cares so little for clothes that I was able to expand into his wardrobe space and take over half of it before he noticed and, most of all, my absolute love of a bargain. My favourite three words in the English language have to be "Sale Now On". ("New Season's Stock" never quite does it for me.)
For bargainistas like me these are golden days. My personal inbox is crammed with ways for me to save money feeding my fashion habit. This morning I counted seventeen different retail establishments who have been in touch with me since Christmas with tempting offers: a new look just a click away.
My recent mywardrobe.com extravaganza was prompted by their pre-sale, pre-Christmas 30% discount preview: not to be missed. If it hadn't been for the Issey Miyake sample sale just a few weeks earlier; that 60% reduction at Liberty, the additional discount at Urban Outfitters and the fantastic stock, price slashed at various online emporia, I could have had a reasonably parsimonious Christmas.
My pre and post Christmas haul included a nice new Vivienne Westwood slouchy dress (so handy for traveling); a pair of rather avant garde trousers (but hell, I'm sure I can carry them off. They just need the right shoes) - again, thanks to Auntie Viv (I have so many of her clothes I feel we are practically related); two more casual dresses for 'weekends' (those weekends that only happen in sunday supplements where one dons a cashmere smock rather than one's sons old jeans); a pair of shoes (still in transit); a large "signature piece" necklace and some adventurous earrings which keep getting caught in my clothes. They were all incredible bargains. I don't regret a single one of them.
However, call me Isaac Newton, but there must be some basic physical law or other about the maximum density of coathangers vs the available volume of cupboard space. And frankly I'm spending too much money to afford a bigger house.
Instead of six figure savings/a collection of early Damien Hirsts/a flat in the Algarve I have two and a half wardrobe fulls of clothes, plus a few random boxes under the spare bed. I throw things out with glee but I replace them just as eagerly.
So, I wondered, could I just stop? I have enough clothes to keep me going. They're pretty nice on the whole (there are some notable exceptions, more of which as time goes on). Why don't I just stop shopping and see what happens?
I've read enough articles to know about "shopping your own closet". There are certainly enough permutations available in mine.
So that's what this blog is about: can you love clothes like I do and yet not buy them for a year? Does it really work trying to make new looks out of your old stuff? And most of all can I resist temptation?
I'll pass on the tips I gather; the sales I'm missing; the 'must haves' I mustn't have and perhaps every now and again I'll set aside a limited sum and get suggestions on what I should spend it on.
Oh and by the way, the Manolo Blahnik sale in their chi-chi Chelsea HQ starts next Friday. Check out the second room. That's where they keep the older stuff which is seriously (and I mean seriously) reduced.