Fall/Winter Shopping Challenge

So everything I read about what should be in your wardrobe includes a basic white shirt.  I have been on this search for about a year now.  I have seen shirts, many of them, but they are never quite right.  I have a short waist, I have a stumpy neck and the basic white shirt is not tailored for my particular build. 

The design is one drawback but there’s the material as well.  I have yet to find material that isn’t so stiff it’s like putting on cardboard or so soft it won’t hold its shape.   In my head, I see the very shirt I need but I have yet to see it for purchase.   That’s my big search this fall/winter…the basic white shirt. 

Another item that appears on the list regularly, no matter the author of the “expert’s advice” is a black pencil skirt.  Well, now, for many of the same reasons above, the black pencil skirt for this round and short body type is elusive.    I am not a pencil. 

I met a lady last week who was wearing a full, swingy, batik printed, silky skirt.  She was much taller than me, not thin and close to my age.  The skirt swished and swayed as she walked.  I commented on how nicely the skirt moved.  She replied that it was one of her favorite things and has had it for years and years.  I said “I understand, looking at your skirt, what they mean by the perfect length…that skirt is the perfect length for you.” She smiled and said “I had it hemmed”.  It hit her exactly at the knee.

I began to think about the skirts in my closet that I sometimes wear.  They are all..even a black skirt I wear often…too long.  Way too long.  I can think of three skirts right now I am going to have hemmed.  It will take inches and inches off the skirts so in some cases I think they actually have to be tailored from the waist in order to preserve the shape of the skirt.  It’s complicated.  But, I realized that items that made it into the donation box as “the wardrobe that didn’t work”  was not always based on color.   I also had lots of things of the wrong length.  It’s not even about shopping in the petite section by the way, in case my tall friends are wondering ~ totally different.

So I have started my list for the Fall Shopping Challenge ~ the soft but structured basic white shirt, the perfect black pencil skirt, which will take some alteration.   (I may have to just scrap the existing items and replace them with items that can be more easily altered, but I really like the material!) That’s already a big order and sounds like a long, long Saturday.