Friday Outfitblog

By | September 11, 2009

Missed me

Black dress is from eShakti.com; grey cardi is from Avenue (now consumed by Jessica London, a development with which I am not entirely displeased); green and black plaid scarf from Marshalls; shoes by Dansko.

Several weeks ago I was contacted by a rep from Marshalls/TJ Maxx asking for a little blog promo in exchange for some Giftcard Love. As I am already a committed TJX patron (hell, in college I even worked at the Marshalls on Boylston in Boston’s Back Bay for a year or two, and I had to quit because I was spending every paycheck in the store–oh retail employment, I don’t miss you at all) my reaction was YES PLEASE, even though I’ve had an evolving love/hate thing with Marshalls and TJ Maxx in recent years.* It began when TJ Maxx stopped carrying plus sizes above a 3X; and then Marshalls seemed to follow suit, though recently my local store is carrying them again. I am also annoyed that neither Marshalls nor TJ Maxx ever has more than one or two plus size dresses in stock at any given time; dudes, if Ross and AJ Wright can have racks packed with plus-size dresses, y’all can too. (Of course, my most recent trip to Marshalls made me a liar, when I found two of this Torrid dress in 4X, on clearance for ten bucks–but I maintain those were the only fat dresses in the whole damn store.)

In spite of these issues, I do rely on Marshalls and TJ Maxx for three things: cardigans, accessories, and shoes. Cardigans and shoes are a year-round thing, but in the fall I turn into a scarf-devouring monster (see above; actually see all my outfits from the past week on Flickr) and I get pretty much all my scarves from one of these two stores. They’re inexpensive enough to buy in multitudes, even in swell natural fibers like silk and wool, and they can make an otherwise-boring outfit immediately look put-together and superchic. Seriously, see above: black dress, grey cardi-thing, boooorrring. Add scarf, STYLISH! This is an easy cheat for even the most fashion-challenged among us. I have a whole book about tying scarves (hush, it was a gift), but there’s some great online resources on the subject as well (here’s one fairly comprehensive example, with pretty-if-not-precise illustrations).

Happy Friday, kids.

*Sometimes I think that if I were less critical of bleeding everything on this blog, I’d get more Giftcard Love. OH WELL. I GOTTA BE ME.

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