When shopping is less than therapuetic

Sunday morning flea market excursion, success rating: zero. Nadda, Zilch. And I had such high hopes too.

The quest for decent, good-looking shoes that don’t cost a bomb is a lonely and immensely frustrating one. In and out of shoe shop after shoe shop for months only to be continually disappointed at the blandness and flimsiness of the wares on display. When I actually come across something I actually like I can predict the outcome when the salesgirl goes off to look for my shoe size, it’s inevitable, they would have just sold the last pair with my size and no, they will not be getting any new stock.

I have always thought that there is an every ready market for shoes. Women of all shapes and sizes love their shoes. It’s universal because while some clothes lines cater to women of a certain shape, making it especially hard for plus sized women to find clothes that fit, shoes for the most part are not so discriminatory. I know I would (almost) kill to have my pick of shoes that are stylish yet classic enough to not ever go out of style. And there shouldn’t be a trade-off when it comes to quality either. Hm, it’s times like these that I idly muse about opening my own shoe shop. I’d just need to source for the correct merchandise, the market is already waiting impatiently.

When I come to think of it actually, the same goes for clothes too. I’ve always preferred classic pieces to whatever is the current rage. I think women should learn to stick to whatever looks good on them and clothes that will not age rather than blindly following the waves of fashion. Case in point, what would possess any woman, no matter how shapely, to think she looked good in three quarter leggings? There is a reason this trend died out, resurrecting it probably means the fashion industry has run out of ideas. One should never wear anything they would be mortally embarrassed about when faced with old pictures of themselves. Of course there are times when trends do take a turn for the better, and produce as a result a ‘new classic’ so to speak. Unfortunately trends like these are few and far between.

This is obviously the rant of a dissatisfied shopper. People complain that there are too many malls in KL, but while I think there probably are enough, the problem lies in the imbalance between quantity and quality, we’re high on former but low on the latter. I wish there were a solution or a satisfactory conclusion to this dilemma, but I suspect that I (and those of you in the same boat) am destined to wander the malls forever searching in vain for that elusive shopper’s haven where clothes and shoes look and fit like a dream. Yeah, but for now, that is just what it is, a dream.

And if you think this is too melodramatic for something as frivolous as apparel, then you do not belong to my target demographic (read: you’re a guy).