Mossimo tank from Target - 2010 - $7 on sale (available) / Pleated skirt from Goodwill Miami - 2011 - $6 (similar) / Gray scarf - 2010 - swap (similar) / Mossimo flats from Target - 2010 - $18 on sale (similar) / Premier Designs faux pearl drop earrings - 2010 - $20? (similar) / J. Crew belt - 2011 - $10 on sale (similar) / Hair tutorial from The Beauty Department
[Worn: 09.30.11 | To: Write, write, and write. Changed into jeans and a sweater for dinner w/ family]
Is it really October already? Dressy September just flew by. A few thoughts on the experience:
- Getting dressed dressed in the morning does wonders for my motivation and work. Being dressed up even affects how professional I am on the phone (but maybe that's just me).
- Walking around Target in heels isn't so bad. Walking around Target, Michael's (x2) and Pearl Art (x2) in one afternoon in heels can get pretty bad, though.
- Miami may be hot, but on my regular weekday jaunt from home to volunteering to grocery store back home, I'm only in the sun without air conditioning for a maximum of 5 minutes. Even Publix has a parking garage!
- If I didn't dress up regularly, about 70% of my closet would be ignored. I didn't repeat that many items this month, but still barely dented the surface of my wardrobe. I've done 3 major closet purges already this year, but it might be time to do some more editing.
And now on to how NOT to thrift. I was so excited when I passed by a Goodwill Superstore on one of my first days in Miami (before I knew that every Goodwill in Miami is a superstore, whatever that means). I stopped by to see what I could grab for cheap while I was living out of my suitcase and waiting for the rest of my stuff to get here. This skirt immediately caught my eye, and for $6, I figured I could test-drive the pleated skirt trend. I also picked up a new belt, some dress shirts for K (we hadn't packed any work clothes for him because we thought our stuff would be here by the time he started his job), and a book.
Fast-forward to later that afternoon, after getting caught in a thunderstorm and sloshing through a flooded parking lot in my leather sandals. I dry off and decide to test drive my new skirt. I go to put it on and it buttons, just barely, at my ribcage (the narrowest part of my torso). Whew, that was a close one. I go to zip it up, and...umm...where in the world is the zipper? It hasn't been ripped out. It looks like it was never even put in. All the seams are smooth and finished, there is just a giant open slit where a zipper would normally be.
Fast-forward a month and a half to late September. September 29 to be exact. Half of Miami is closed for Rosh Hashanah and I'm waiting for a conference call I have scheduled for the afternoon with a client in California. I grab the skirt, an invisible zipper I picked up at Joann and my sewing box and get to work. It takes less than an hour to hand sew the zipper into the inside lining. I left the outside gap intact because it was on the inside of a pleat and would have been more awkward with the zipper than without. Still, the skirt barely buttons, but I'm only on week 2 of half-marathon training...I have high hopes (and hopefully high-enough motivation and energy) that it will fit better by January.
My suspicion is that someone made the skirt as a sewing project, and when they realized they forgot the zipper, they sent it off to Goodwill (it also has no tags or markings on it, or any indication that there ever were any). But for $8 ($6 plus a $2 zipper), it's not bad. Here's hoping it will fit eventually, or Goodwill may just have a repeat resident. At least the next owner will have a zipper.
Have you ever come home with a thrifted item to find out something's missing? Do you fix it yourself, return it, or do something else with it?
