Getting What You Pay For

One of the best things about having a blog that no one reads (or at least comments on the posts), is that I can have the occasional self-indulgent post that is totally irrelevant to almost everything. For instance:

I have always hated buying clothes. It has something to do with being overweight, because I always hated being reminded what sizes I was (especially waist size).

Back when I was single, I would buy nicer quality clothes -- and most of them I still own. For instance, I have two L.L. Bean shirts that I bought during my freshman year in college (1992-1993). Both were fairly expensive (especially the flannel lined canvas shirt), but are in really good shape. A little weathered, but they are just now getting broken in.

Flash forward to some clothes I bought a year or so ago from Old Navy. Half the price and they are already in much worse shape than the L.L. Bean shirts. The button placard (I think that's what it is called, the strip of cloth where the buttons are sewn on) is puckered and frayed and the color is already fading.

My favorite cheap clothing story has to do with Old Navy. After I lost 70 pounds, I had to go out and buy a lot of new clothes. There was one particular type of shirt I liked from ON, and I got a couple of different patterns/colors in the same style. Well, you would think that the identical style shirt (with just different colors) would fit the same, right? Guess again. The two shirts were made in different factories and thus had different quality control and tolerances. Ridiculous. So, I have two identical shirts with different sizes.