Where have the good shops gone?
sisty56 and I had a short e-mail exchange in which we mourned brands no longer available (in retail) like Ferre and Gigli. And yesterday I read that Filene's Basement have filed for bankruptcy, sunk by the economy and a two-year closing of the flagship Boston store due to renovations. (How dumb is that?)
I can name at least a dozen local designer boutiques and department stores where I once shopped, and now they're gone, a never-ending contraction in what's available.
(For Torontonians: Harridges, The Irish Shop, Sportables, Debbie Kiwiets, Robin Kay, Clotheslines, Valery, Dorrit, Creed's, Alfred Sung, Deborah Kuchmé, Tequila Mockingbird, Marilyn Brooks, Bent Boys, Wayne Clark, Loucas, Liptons, Eatons, Pat McDonagh, Marie St-Pierre, Ira Berg.)
If you are over 50, you have probably seen a beloved store close. Retail is risky and there's a natural lifespan... but am I hallucinating?
What happened in the last 15 years?
Even adjusting for my larger size (14-16), the clothes are not there. I'm deeply underserved by the current retail sector. I can see what I want in my mind's eye but I can't find it.
Who's left standing?
1. Department stores. Styles are unexciting, or the lone piece in my size is gone.
2. High-end brand-owned boutiques (Gucci, Escada, Boss, Vuitton), as uninterested in carrying my size as I am in paying their inflated prices.
3. Trendy shops for the mostly young, decidedly thin, short-skirted customer.
A 37 year old size 12-14 friend of mine was shooed out of Mendocino; the associate said, "We have nothing for you here."
4. Discounters. A spin through Winners, our Century 21, is as depressing as a visit to a locked ward.
What to do?
Online vendors are some help; thank the sweater gods for J Crew. I try to cozy up to Talbot's but it's hardly a thrill.
Local specialty stores such as Holt Renfrew (like Neiman Marcus) sell exquisite clothes but in small sizes, and there are few of them. Eileen Fisher wilts on me. Boutique or vintage stores are hit and mostly miss.
Several friends are going the dressmaker route, motivated by fabric they bought while traveling; that may be my next stop.
Dreaming of dresses
Several months ago, I dreamed I was cycling in the countryside, and came upon a village. In the tiny town, I saw a shop window, and the window was dressed in perfect clothes for me, and strewn with delightful scarves, hats, jewelry. (Perhaps I was in France, the clothes were kind of 'sophisticated Amelie'.)
But everything was closed, so I cycled on, vowing to come back, thinking "I must remember where this is".
I took the dream literally: the perfect shop is not here. Can I find it? Does it exist outside the dream? And will they carry size 14?
I can name at least a dozen local designer boutiques and department stores where I once shopped, and now they're gone, a never-ending contraction in what's available.
(For Torontonians: Harridges, The Irish Shop, Sportables, Debbie Kiwiets, Robin Kay, Clotheslines, Valery, Dorrit, Creed's, Alfred Sung, Deborah Kuchmé, Tequila Mockingbird, Marilyn Brooks, Bent Boys, Wayne Clark, Loucas, Liptons, Eatons, Pat McDonagh, Marie St-Pierre, Ira Berg.)
If you are over 50, you have probably seen a beloved store close. Retail is risky and there's a natural lifespan... but am I hallucinating?
What happened in the last 15 years?
Even adjusting for my larger size (14-16), the clothes are not there. I'm deeply underserved by the current retail sector. I can see what I want in my mind's eye but I can't find it.
Who's left standing?
1. Department stores. Styles are unexciting, or the lone piece in my size is gone.
2. High-end brand-owned boutiques (Gucci, Escada, Boss, Vuitton), as uninterested in carrying my size as I am in paying their inflated prices.
3. Trendy shops for the mostly young, decidedly thin, short-skirted customer.
A 37 year old size 12-14 friend of mine was shooed out of Mendocino; the associate said, "We have nothing for you here."
4. Discounters. A spin through Winners, our Century 21, is as depressing as a visit to a locked ward.
What to do?
Online vendors are some help; thank the sweater gods for J Crew. I try to cozy up to Talbot's but it's hardly a thrill.
Local specialty stores such as Holt Renfrew (like Neiman Marcus) sell exquisite clothes but in small sizes, and there are few of them. Eileen Fisher wilts on me. Boutique or vintage stores are hit and mostly miss.
Several friends are going the dressmaker route, motivated by fabric they bought while traveling; that may be my next stop.
Dreaming of dresses
Several months ago, I dreamed I was cycling in the countryside, and came upon a village. In the tiny town, I saw a shop window, and the window was dressed in perfect clothes for me, and strewn with delightful scarves, hats, jewelry. (Perhaps I was in France, the clothes were kind of 'sophisticated Amelie'.) But everything was closed, so I cycled on, vowing to come back, thinking "I must remember where this is".
I took the dream literally: the perfect shop is not here. Can I find it? Does it exist outside the dream? And will they carry size 14?
Comments
I was prompted, though, to note that Filene's Basement was killed far earlier than 2 years ago...I shopped there for nearly 30 years and saw the end times happen when someone got greedy; their markdown system that had worked for decades was reduced to limit the bargain benefit to the customer and then all kinds of new off-price crap was hustled in so that they were no more unique than a TJX franchise.
When FBs changed hands/restructured, the death throes began and I would walk past the store in Downtown Crossing, declining to bother and mourning the awesomeness that used to be. RIP FB's. :(
The only plus side to it is that people who live outside the big cities can look as up-to-date as the city people. When I was younger, this was not the case.
Wow! Filenes Basement. My mother grew up in Boston and a tradition for our trips home from visits to relatives was a stop at Filenes Basement to buy "candy seconds" to eat en route.
Frugal: That's the great boon of online stores, too. You can live in the middle of nowhere and get a J Crew iridescent silk skirt.
I agree with Someone that it cheapness and the mass-market. The local stores with clothes selected by a good buyer with an eye are all gone, at least around here, and replaced by cookie-cutter sameness. No wonder retail is having problems, most of it is indistinguishable.
I would shop at a good local store, and there are pitfalls with online. I ordered a selection of new tees from JCrew and they were all huge, even though I ordered my regular size and other items in that size fit well. By the time they arrived the colors I wanted were sold out in a smaller size. Oh to be able to walk into a store and actually try the clothes on.
Moreover, I find online shopping a pain, especially since most of those online retailers are located in the US - why are there so few Canadian choices?
There used to be Eaton's and Simpsons as well as the Bay, and in the East End, Dupuis Frères. One small chain that does sometimes carry interesting quality clothing for adult women is Simons, which started out in Québec City and has opened locations in Montréal (the downtown store is in part of the former Simpsons). Although it is a bit too cheap-chic, I've found some good garments at H&M in Europe, but here, they only carry very small sizes - odd as in Europe their regular sizes go up to about 16-18 and some of the locations carry plus sizes. Here H&M seems to only target teens, certainly not the case in the original stores.
The odd thing is that this gap doesn't correspond to economic common sense, as boomer women have considerable assets as a cohort, despite the recent economic slump.
But Duchesse, there are always craft fairs. ;-)
http://tinyurl.com/cs4uyc
Woman goes out once a year and splashes on a really hot designer dress. This year, she's put on weight, and all the dresses have magically disappeared.
I've seen the stores close, but since my available cash didn't allow for anything beyond mass-market clothing until maybe the last ten years, I don't feel it as harshly. I just notice the absence of clothing I want to wear!
I'm not sure whether that's my size, or my odd taste, or some combination of the two. But trendy is too skimpy for me (and would have been even when I was twenty, as I was never one of those sleek-limbed visions even in my so-called prime of youth) and "good" clothes seem to be so uniformly dowdy!
@lagatta à montréal - I don't like online shopping for the same reason. I need to touch things, feel the fabric (if it feels yucky on my skin, I won't wear it more than once no matter what it looks like) and check the construction to be sure it actually is worth the price. Plus, I'm funny-shaped.
who makes clothing and dresses expressly for the over-50. Some of them are quite interesting. I am especially amused by the T-shirts in the 2008 collection saying "Not At Your Age", and the dresses embellished with scarves and single gloves.
For me, it's not as much size as fit, cut, quality. Oddly, this is why I sometimes overshop -- I'm so grateful to find! I'm very fortunate to have a local boutique that carries some European lines I like -- Sarah Pacini, Crea, Creenstone, Sandwich. They sometimes veer too Eileen Fisher-y, ladies-who-lunch-y for my lifestyle and thus end up hanging in the closet, but at least when I put them on I feel good. All-dressed-up-with-nowhere-to-go still beats this-skirt's-too-short-and-my-middle-looks-lumpy!!
And I justify my over-shopping by knowing that I'm supporting the kind of store I can't afford to lose.
I miss Marks & Spencer for lingerie.
Compass Rose:
re the Tanya Gold article, she write the truth, "I am a successful writer - with a big bum - and down here on Bond Street they don't want my money." And did you see, 119 comments.
re Fanny Karst: I urge everyone to look at the site, interesting! wouldn't wear it all but great to see such a fresh approach.
Thank you for both!
materfamilias: There are a few boutiques here like the one you describe (remember our stop at Any Direct Flight?), but even those rare gems are carrying lower price points.
I think the tailor is the best option. Even though I don't have trouble finding clothing I like, I still take many things to the tailor. I also may start having dresses made from 50's and 60's dress patterns. Then I can have lady-like dresses but in more modern fabrics.
I just asked a friend who was in the high-end boutique business for 30 years what he thought; he said "there is nothing to replace these stores" and said he thought the most beautiful clothes right now were from Max Mara.
Small stores in small towns often have great stuff and know their clients - frequently larger women. The Clan Shoppe in Brighton has a surprising good selection and jeans that fit! There is a great shop in Simcoe, Astles, where the buyer would remember me on his buying trips and would come back with treasures. I like small town shopping.
119 comments on the Tanya Gold article, but I don't advise reading them - "if you're a size 16, then you're too fat and disgusting to even think of wearing designer wear; if you want the dresses, get off your arse, start running, and stop eating." Oh, Daily Fail, your readers never disappoint.
(Particularly considering that a 16 in the UK is, at best, a 14 in Canada. I do remember vividly, though, my first trip to London, when I was at my largest (about a 16 Canadian) and had a little cash for vacation money. Not a single store sold anything that came even near to fitting me - size 12 UK was the biggest most had, and "larges" were very much on the skimpy side. And so many women on the street wearing tight, bulging, unflattering clothing! I came home with a new suitcase full of books - well, I had to spend it on something!)
So I checked out the Vogue patterns. Wonderful! They have some of their old patterns (50's and 60's) available and the outfits are stunning!
I found a dressmaker - so now I need to go find the fabric I want!
Do try a dressmaker. Not on;y do you get to pick the exact pattern and fabric - it's actually fitted to you - not a dummy!
My last experience was a disaster, I wore the dress once. Let her talk me into the wrong fabric, a very expensive mistake.
The problem, as I see it, with having your clothes tailored is where to find the fabrics. The offerings at our local fabric store are, if anything, WORSE than Walmart etc.
In my dreams, I have the skill to take the occasional pieces I find thrifting and remake them into something wearable.
I miss the regional department stores here in the U.S. that Macy's/Federated gobbled up, especially Marshall Field's in Chicago. Macy's turned them all into cheap-looking stores full of cheap-looking clothes.
SewingLibrarian
Funny, I'd forgot about Ogilvy. They seemed to have gone all "boutiques within store", which I hate.
I miss Marks and Sparks very much - they actually make supportive bras in large cup sizes that don't look like a surgical garment. When they shut down in Canada - one of those weird "maximise profits" closings; the Montréal shop in any case turned a profit and was always packed - I found them again in Netherlands in France, but then they shut down their continental Europe business, and I haven't happened to go to the UK for many years.
So much of the rest of it is dull and badly made... it's sad when a great shop goes out of business.
I live in Washington, DC, and I can't think of any independent store that has closed here. Department stores, yes -- Garfinkel's, Woodward & Lothrop, and, to a lesser extent, Hecht's, have all closed. The former two were full service stores where salespeople made a lifetime career of it, and knew their customers.
In DC we still have Saks-Jandel (which lays claim to being the original Saks family, and hence retains the name, though it has nothing to do with Saks Fifth Avenue). It's a high end store that carries designer lines but of course I don't shop there because it's too expensive.
I think the answer, at least for me, is consignment stores. I wait for the women who shop at Saks Jandel to turn in their Agnonas, YSLs, Akris, Rykiel, Armani etc. and buy it used. (I haven't bought all of these brands, but just to give you an idea of what turns up in the consignment stores here).
Here, Filene's basement still carries some items from Barney's NY, and I've managed to get several good deals, including shoes. Size is not a dealbreaker, but it is an issue, because there are very few things even in my size (10-12).
Remember Loehmann's? It used to be great, now mostly crap, but the other day they had some really great shoes, I was surprised.
But at this point, I would shop at a great local store -- if they catered to my age and sensibility. As a backup, I would definitely consider a dressmaker. I think that's definitely the way to go if you are so picky as to want, oh, say, SLEEVES on your dresses!!
Lagatta beat me to it but I was going to suggest Marina Rinaldi. You might have some luck there, are most of their clothes seem to be designed for tall women. Their vibe is more Italian than Amelie, though.
Anyway, they're all gone, gone with the wind. And BTW, I did get a pair of Max Mara pants at that consignment store in DC -- they are navy wool sailor-type design, trim and high waisted, and I wear them ALL the time, more than any other pair of pants I own. So, so far, your friend is absolutely right.
I would like to brush up on my sewing skills, but can't find a place to purchase quality fabric.
Three stores have close din town. Yet one high end stor eis still going strong but as you say all the sizes are tiny! The one department store is all Lily and empire waists which look grest on little children but if you are curvey looks bizarre (if you can even get into it)
I am still very busy (though it is not making half of last year)so happy about the fact that people actually come in!!!- Seems everyone is coming to the store because the prices are right. The service is great and that's where a lot of stores have problems- their attitude in this recession has to change if they want to survive or to change their price points.
Really sad though to see stores close.
Yes, of course it can be pricy. I'm a bottom-feeder and only shop at such places when they have sales, except perhaps for a perfect silk tee (where have THOSE gone, by the way?) The first time I shopped there the clerk or owner was not very nice to me - guess it was obvious I was not from Westmount - but I've returned since and they were very nice.
And yes, as you can see in the picture it is pretty along there and there is a lot of other shopping or window shopping nearby, including good-quality friperies and consignment shops. As well as beautiful Westmount Park with its antique conservatory.
The nice factor is really an issue with some stores. I sometimes go into Holt Renfrew in my dog walking clothes, accompanied by my admittedly flashy boxer dog, and I get treated like a queen. Or maybe the dog is treated like a queen. At least at the make up counters. Lesser stores won't admit her.
Sorry, Duchesse, I 'm off topic.
Such things would never fit me. I only have a knit top from MR, bought on sale when in Italy.
Yes, in Europe they say from (French) 42, which is a US size 10.
It seems so silly for designers and retailers to ignore the clients who have the money. From a purely economic spoint of view, all those dollars/euros/francs/etc of sizes 10 and up are not getting spent.
Not many indie boutiques that cater to sizes 10 or up even in SF Bay Area. I depend on Ann Taylor, and yes, Banana Republic by defauly. Forth and Towne was a great store - how sad of Gap not to carry it through.
I am 51 and, shocker - I am not a CEO. My lips say "designer" but my wallet says "GAP." And I have absolutely no idea where to shop anymore.
I've practically lived at Ann Taylor for the last two years, simply because I'm too exhausted to keep looking and looking and looking. But lately ... Ann - it's not you, it's me ... I just need ... I don't know ... something else. I'm sorry. We can totally still be friends!
I don't even really need "fashion." I am perfectly happy in a pair of great fitting dark rinse bootcuts, a simple top, and a great jacket. But I would really love it if the jeans didn't cost $162. And if they actually covered my butt.
Did I mention that I'm not a CEO? Where are the clothes for the rest of us?
My wardrobe is mainly Ann Taylor, Target, Banana Republic and J.Crew on occasion. I don't really want to shop in only these stores, but that is all there is.
The occasional Anthropologie sale keeps me going for quirky pieces so my wardrobe doesn't die of boredom.
But overall, the pickings are slim. Shopping is a chore now, and I come home empty handed most trips.
diverchic: Lula is the perfect accessory.
Chris: I'm not dissing Banana, but find the skirts too short. No Ann Taylor anywhere near where I live.
dollcannotfly and hollarback: Are you near good consignment stores? That MIGHT offer some alternatives.
I also watch pricey boutiques for sales, if only not to have the same BR sweater as half the office.
sisty: When I asked recently I was told they had reduced inventory due to the recession. Did have amazing success with one local designer who now makes an "XL" (not special order) because I asked her! And you can bet she gets my business.
I agree about the shortness of Banana's skirts. It's kept me from a few purchases.
Many online stores carry my size (14/ 16) that are not carried in the flesh-and-blood version of the same store. Eg. J Crew: I can find quite a bit of my size on their website but only the very rare item when I actually physically enter one of their shops.
And, I agree with your overall post. Where are the fun, sexy, interesting, well-made clothes for women? So much made-in-China crap...
Muriel Dombret of Clothes in Ottawa does twice-yearly trunk shows in Toronto, you might enjoy.
Beautiful, simple clothes.
Email: info@murieldombret.com