Outfitblogging: Being Resourceful

About thirty minutes ago, friend and fellow Fatshionista blogger etana was seated on the floor in my office with her dreamy guide pup D. We were talking about the eternally-limited resources for plus size clothing, and the need to Be Resourceful. Which got me thinking.

Often when I’ve posted outfit pictures – be it here, on Flickr, on the Fatshionista livejournal community – I will see comments from folks envying the apparently-awesome local resources I must have available to me for plus-sized clothing. It’s always with a bit of chagrin that I tell people how little of what I wear was actually procured locally. Sure, I live in a good-sized city, and I could hit up a Lane Bryant or three if I wanted, but I don’t much care for Lane Bryant’s goods, so I rarely do. In fact, everything you see in the above images – everything, right down to the accessories and shoes – was purchased online. Some of it was scoured from catalogs, some from online-only shops, some from the websites of big-name fatty chain stores, but every single piece was ordered online and shipped to me.

This is the norm for my shopping habits. Yes, I pay for shipping, but I typically more than make up for it in coupon codes (cough Retail Me Not cough). Yes, sometimes the stuff I order crashes and burns on me in the most horrific way and I have to send it back. Yes, it requires a lot of patience, and persistence, and shopping online is occasionally a big gamble that fails to pay off. But it’s also the only way I’ve been able to build the wardrobe I really want.

The one exception in this particular grouping is the dress pictured above. It’s a black & white gingham faux-wrap dress by Donna Ricco, and that dress I bought in person at Lee Lee’s Valise, in NYC, back in May of this year. Even at the time I was struck by the novelty of buying something in a store because I truly, breathlessly loved it, not because I was settling due to needing something right away, or because it was the least awful option available in a sea of awful options, or because it was on sale. The simple act of trying something on, and having it fit, and loving how it looked, and being able to buy it and take it home right then – I know this is the standard operating procedure for a lot of women, especially a lot of women thinner than me, but it was a big freaking deal for me. To the extent that I have a hard time imagining what it’d be like to do that all the time.

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