I had an exceptionally good shopping experience this weekend and Dan has been urging me to blog about it. It all started when I lined up two job interviews and I had absolutely nothing to wear. I have worked at the same company forever and pretty much every job that I have ever had has fallen into my lap. I've also never had a job where I have had to dress up. I am completely inexperienced with the interview game. The only outfit that I owned that was even remotely appropriate, I last wore to my mom's funeral and even that wouldn't work, because the blouse was a sheer lavender. When your parent has died, you can get away with being inappropriate! So the challenge was set, I needed the whole works including accessories and shoes. We hit the Glendale Galleria during the optimum insanity time of 2pm on a Saturday. When you're already dreading shopping and under pressure to find the right outfit, it totally makes sense to go on a Saturday afternoon.
I love Express, so that was a natural first stop. Loving Express and Express having acceptable professional clothes are two separate issues. At thirty-four, Express might be fine for day-to-day clothes, but there is just nothing okay about their form fitting, low cut "professional" line. They maybe had a few acceptable pieces, but not enough to make a whole outfit that was appropriate. BTW- The sheer lavender funeral outfit was from Express.
Next stop, Nordstroms. They definitely had appropriate clothes, but not a huge selection. Oddly enough, this was the one time that I have shopped at a Nordstroms and found the service to be lacking. With no help and finding nothing that I immediately loved, we moved on.
Macys was a train wreck of people and messy clothes racks. I nearly had a melt down in the shoe department.
The next options were Banana Republic and Ann Taylor...however, before heading to those, I felt a pull towards a store that I have never shopped at prior, The Limited.
I am here to tell you that I had the best shopping experience in the world at The Limited. I was helped by a perky employee named Taylor, who steered me towards exactly what I needed and gave me great style tips.
The clothes were perfect. A wide selection of appropriately conservative, yet still young and fashionable professional outfits. I bought nearly everything that I tried on and walked away with three blouses, a suit jacket, pants, a pencil skirt, two necklaces, two pairs of earrings and a purse for less that three hundred dollars. Everything in the store was 40% and I got an additional 10% for opening an account! That being said, the full price of the items were totally something that I would have been happy to pay if they had not been on sale. I also left with coupons to use later in July that will amount to half off up to a three hundred dollar purchase. I am definitely headed back and I will look for Taylor to help me pick out more great outfits.
And, I got the job!