Re: Rant Men's Clothes

On Sat, 29 Jun 2024 20:37:31 -0400
shawn <nanoflower@notforg.m.a.i.l.com> wrote:

On Sat, 29 Jun 2024 20:29:24 -0400, Rhino
<no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
 

On Sat, 29 Jun 2024 23:19:46 -0000 (UTC)
"Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:
 

I am going to rant. I went to a national department store to buy
button down shirts, which I really needed. A year ago, I'd bought
several shirts. They were driving me nuts because only one of the
shirts had a pocket.
 
I went through all of the shirts for sale in my size. Not a single
shirt had a pocket. Who decreed that men's shirts no longer have
pockets?
 

Some "fashion" guru has apparently decreed that shirts with pockets
are unfashionable and the manufacturers have apparently kowtowed to
this dictat. I'd say I was surprised but I'm not. It's how they've
rolled for years. I've been trying to find a plain T-shirt with a
chest pocket for at least a couple of years but anytime I go to a
store, there are none to be had. Mind you, I haven't checked every
store or catalogue so maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places....
 

 
It exists on Amazon. I've bought good quality t-shirts with the chest
pocket.
 

That's good to hear. I'll have to order some if I can find something
plain; I don't want clothes adorned with giant logos for manufacturers.

Then the matter of shoes. I need another pair of gym shoes/running
shoes that fit. I wear them as my regular walking shoe. I have a
weird shoe size, very long and very narrow.
 
We have the men's shoe comspiracy in which manufacturers inflate
the shoe size and ignore the shoe size standard.
 
I saw a large number of shoes offered in my nominal size, so I
knew it was pointless to try them on. They'd be too small.
 
I bought a pair that was nominally a half size larger. It was too
short.
 
The pair I bought that was 2 1/2 sizes larger than my nominal shoe
size wasn't too short.
 

Shoes are another peeve for me. That started years ago when I tried
to replace a pair of slippers that had worn out. I couldn't find a
single pair in the mall store I visited and asked one of the staff
about it. He told me they only carried slippers at Christmas time
because that was the only time they sold (or maybe only sold in
significant numbers). I still find that baffling because I used to
wear them year round and wouldn't want to wait until Christmas to
replace a worn-out pair.  

 
Which is one reason people are switching to buying most items through
the Internet.
>

I strongly prefer to try a pair of shoes before I buy it. I can picture
weeks of waiting for packages, trying things on, finding them
unsatisfactory and sending them back before I finally find something
suitable. No thank you!
 

As for size, I finally found a  good shoe store a few years back, the
kind that actually measured your feet and made sure you got into
shoes that fit; the places I'd been going to for many previous years
were all basically self-serve places where you tried things on and
settled for whatever you found satisfactory, then took it to the
cashier to ring it up. So I bought two very good pairs of shoes at
this newly-discovered store, dress shoes and a pair of sneakers. I
paid more than I was used to but both were on the sale table at
significant discounts so I could have done much worse. Both have
been excellent shoes. I don't wear dress shoes often so those will
probably last the rest of my life. I wear the sneakers all the time
and expect they'll last a few more years yet.
>
I think you need to find a shoe store that still measures your feet
and where the staff still knows more about shoes than how to operate
the cash register. I think those places are increasingly rare but I
have to imagine a city as big as Chicago still has one or two.
(Unfortunately, the one I found has since closed down because the
owner retired.)
 

This is more evidence that the world has moved on from me and I
literally do not fit in. I should just walk to the horizon and fall
off the edge. 

>
That's probably a bit drastic ;-) Try finding different stores to buy
shirts and shoes!  

--
Rhino