Rediscovering a Favorite Boutique

We’ve had a long wet summer and Sunday both the temp dropped and the rains came: what I’d been dreading was facing me smack in the mirror: I needed to wear jeans.

The last 5 years have been crazy…7 moves, 2 of them international!  TBG lost both his parents. We built a new house, then sold it less than a year later. Locked out of moving into our new condo due to asbestos problems. 8 surgeries between us, including a quintuple bypass and the big C. What the hell is going on here!

Could it get any worse? Mai oui! In the drama, I gained 42 pounds. I managed to camouflage as best as I could, but going up 4 sizes in your ass isn’t easy to camouflage. The big shocker was having to buy a new spring skirt this April, and finding out I’d gone up another size.

So the last 6 months I’ve taken the pounds off, and I’m back in my old size. I’ve re-stocked my t’s, skirts, and dresses. But now, with the Fall weather creeping in, I needed new jeans. I never wore jeans last year, not once.  I started researching my options: nothing trendy or torn or frayed. No logos on the butt. No mom jeans or peeking cracks. And long enough for my 34″ inseams. Oh, and not too expensive while I’m dreaming!

What did I find?

• Gap’s 1969 line looked good and offered a variety of fits,  and was reasonably priced, and wouldn’t be too humiliating trying to figure out my size
• SheFinds.com says “a black wash…sexy and slimming…dark jeans can be worn casual or slimming”. Sounds promising
• O Mag listed great jeans for less than $65…what’s not to like?
• InStyle had an ultimate jeans guide which showed dozens of stars in jeans…and scared me to death!

But InStyle also had a suggestion that turned out to be my best jeans buying guide: Shop Your Closet

Through all those 7 moves,the most recent downsizing from a 4 bed 4000+ house to a small 2 bed 2 bath city apartment, I’d thrown away everything from books to records to clothes to dishes to linens to furniture, and stashed excess in 4 storage units in 3 different states. Sunday I managed to pull from the far corners of my cramped city closet 7 pairs of  jeans carefully chosen years ago that will see me through the next few months. I shopped:

• 2 pairs of Halogen, one dark blue, one black, button flys
  

  from my fave boutique

• 1 pair of DKNY, super casual but a little chic, a little too big but wearable
• 1 pair of white cords, which were too small when I bought them (but a great deal!)
• 1 pair of tan Dana Buchmans, still with the tags on … they’re out of business now!
• 1 pair of Gap faded blues 5 pockets, zip fly, slight flare. Classics
• 1 pair of Banana Republic black zip front straight legs khakis

All long, without tatters or embellishments or anything too young or too hip or too tight or too too.

I swear I didn’t know they were there. I was certain I’d thrown the painful reminders away before we moved here 18 months ago. But something about the InStyle article made me look in my closet Sunday morning, as the rain poured down and TBG waited for me to get ready to go see a movie. To the corners of my closet I can’t possible reach, on the top shelf where I needed a chair to squeeze myself up there, to pull down a stack of fabric from my past. To fearfully unfold them, slip them on, and zip them closed. They fit. No one could me more surprised, and happy, than Moi.

My tiny little closet. My favorite boutique.