September 9, 2009 – miss chicago

I’ve been asked a few times which UK clothing store is my favorite. I find that Q hard to answer simply because I have none. In the UK, clothing chains like TopShop, H&M, Monsoon and River Island have styles that are …. I don’t know, hard to label. Part Boheme, part downtown, punk rockish, Kate-Moss-ish, the long tunic/shirt (and everything else) with tights sort of aesthetic that I neither dig nor understand, much less appreciate. Unfortunately. Good middle reliables like Marks & Spencer are bordering on the boring. Then there are the nice high-ends which are very nice and very high end. But being the newbie that I am in the UK, I have neither occasion to dress that way up, nor inclination to suffer any dent to my patrimony for that kind of fashion.

So the entire 2 months that I last was in the UK (between June and August), I did not buy one piece of clothing. NOT ONE. Simple reason: didn’t find anything I really liked. Until the last day…. we were in Scotland, on the day we were to drive home to Manchester and from there to the airport with me bound for the US the next day. In Debenhams in Edinburgh, I finally found a shoe with lust factor and appeal, at least to me. It was a Jasper Conran, and was in the style of the YSL Fatale, for a frac-frac-fraction of the $930 price. So the toss that remained was between black and the softer brown suede. IN the end it was easy. Black suede — tacky and cheap. Brown suede — visions of Pochahontas, especially with fringes, yes but never mind. I liked it. Thumbs up.