One of the perks of being a writer (fine, blogger. Pfft.) is being able to wear whatever the eff you want to work. Inherent in your oft-unlucrative profession is a penchant for schleppiness. My subject matter of choice means I like to push the schlep envelope – anything comfortable that can be made to look more formal than it is, is on my radar.
Man, was THAT sentence grammatically criminal or WHAT?! Writer my ASS. Anyway.
Leggings have obvs been my go-to Schlepwear for quite some time, but you can’t spend a New York summer in faux pleather, regardless of how stretchy it is. When stepping outside means entering a sauna, what you wear’s gotta breathe. Hence the purchase of these paper-thin, wide-legged, glorified sweatpants.
I saw these at Forever 21 a while back; they’re Twelve By Twelve and as such, priced at $29. Twenty-nine bucks for an effing pair of sweatpants. Ick. In an attempt to avoid spending this borderline-stupid amount, I spent a solid month looking elsewhere for their equal. No dice. I finally bit the bullet and bought them, on the grounds that the slightly shiny sheen in the material means they can be dressed up as well as down. Stay tuned for photo documentation.
While we’re on the subject of Forever 21, a practical addendum to Making Forever 21 Your Bitch: The best time to shop this beast of a store is on a week day, from late morning to early afternoon. Those of you who don’t have the luxury of doing so know full well the zoo-like mayhem one endures whilst shopping there on weekends.
To counteract said mayhem and emerge sanity-in-tact, I highly recommend tackling the store in installments; that means one trip to try-on, and another trip to buy. Wait in the cursed dressing room line, figure out what you want, and get the fuck out of there before you lose your mind. Then, either go back to the store for your item and wait in the other cursed line to buy it, or – if you’ve got the patience to wait for snail mail (I don’t) – shop it online.
This tactic is known as the Two-Trip Clause.
I made the mistake of hitting Forever 21′s Herald Square location on a Saturday afternoon to buy these pants. The task of simply finding them involved an exhausting amount of crowd-dodging, not to mention continual apologies on my behalf for bumping into people with my massive tote bag (unintentionally, I should add. Bags should be used as weapons only as a last resort). Another big fat GRRR to the fifteen minutes spent waiting in the checkout line. Had I not tried on these pants previously, I seriously wouldn’t have made it out alive.
Two trips might seem like a pain in the ass, but think of it this way – if you try something on sans buying it on the spot, and forget about it shortly thereafter, you probs didn’t want it all that much to begin with. The Two-Trip Clause is thus designed to save both your sanity and your moolah, so give it a whirl. You’ll thank me later.
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