The long and the shorts of it

[j4]

[One of the two posts I started earlier today, restored from draft]

The other day in a charity shop I tried on a pair of size 8 Karen Millen trousers. Lovely black trousers with POCKETS in a smart warm wool mix. They fit perfectly around the waist, but unfortunately K Millen like every other clothes wallah seems to assume that nobody in the world could possibly be shorter than 5'5", so there were a good 4 inches of superfluous fabric sloshing around my feet. I suspect the chances of being able to take up something so subtly boot-cut effectively are small; the chances of me being able to do the alterations are below zero. So I didn't buy them.

But if I'm actually a size 8 now (I mean, what?), or rather if clothes-size inflation has meant that my normal size 12ish has been rebranded as a size 8, does that mean I'd fit into these Orla Kiely cropped trousers? After all, if they're meant to be cropped, there's a chance they won't be too long for me.

Also, why doesn't every shop do what Marks and Spencers do, and offer 'short', 'regular', 'long' options for all their trousers? I always wondered as a kid why my grandma and my mum thought so highly of M&S, a shop which I associated with middle-aged people. But now it all makes sense. See, my mum and my grandma are both about my height... and I'm rushing headlong into the middle age I've been aspiring to for years.

Comments

[monkeyhands.livejournal.com]

The remembering sizes/shops is even harder if you basically only ever buy things from charity shops; you have to remember that you're a 10 in new M&S but a 14-16 in M&S stuff from the 70s or 80s

Oh, yeah, totally. The "vintage" wedding dress I gave away the other day was labelled a 12 but now it would sooooo be a 6.

Do you want a black skirt suit with weird corset-like lacing up the sides? :-)

[making excited panting noises] Yes please! Assuming it fits, that is...