“Oh, look! It’s just the kind of jacket I wanted and that I’ve always needed!”
“That’s nice dear.”
“Oh, but it only comes in large L .”
“That’s nice dear.”
Terry’s several thing, but a large is definitely not one of them. She’s not even a medium, and sometimes, she’s not even a small.
And that’s a problem when buying non-toxic clothing. Most of the stores that sell non-toxic clothing seem to believe that one size fits all. The most (or is that the least?) they will sell is an oversized medium – meaning it’s larger than most mediums, but not as big as a large.
Not only does one size fit all, but many of these stores are into the frumpy look. Frumpy is another word for wrinkled or wind-creased. Actually frumpy is not creased at all, everything just kind of hangs on you like a sack. Frumpiness started in the 60’s with the hippies. Then the yuppies came along and ruined it by turning it into the sack look. The next generation tried to do away with it all together. Frumpy clothing still exists, although many people would prefer to dress casually without looking frumpy.
So, quite often I hear, “Oh, look!” and know it will turn into nothing. This is nice on our budget and it’s also nice that Terry doesn’t have to shop till she drops. And when you have MCS that doesn’t take long!
Of course, if either of us were good with a thread and needle (and I don’t mean sewing on buttons), we wouldn’t have this problem. We could just buy the material and make the clothing ourselves. Janice’s (at 800-JANICES) does have seamstresses and they are sensitive to chemical sensitivities. So, we could call them and order some clothes made. However we’d have to specify organic cotton, as most of their cotton is not organic. Just one of our little idiosyncrasies – if we’ve got to have it non-toxic, it might as well also be organic. Actually though, organic is a lot less toxic than non-toxic non-organic, which of course is less toxic that toxic non-organic, ….
Of course we would have to pay the seamstresses at Janice’s, so there you go again.
Once Terry found a swimsuit – not totally organic, but very close. She ordered the two piece model. The top came. The bottom was put on back order. After several months we called and they said, “Oh, that’s out of season. You’ll have to order it again next year.” You bet! The first thing Terry did when that swimsuit was back in season was to order the bottom. It’s bad enough Terry can’t find any clothes to wear (because people only sell clothes which are too large for her), but running around in just a swimsuit top was going above and beyond the call of duty. (I suppose if it had been the bottom, I’d have had to say it was going below the call of duty.)
We, in our naivete, of course thought that it was just this one store. But we’ve run into similar problems with other stores that sell non-toxic clothing. They don’t let you know when something is out of stock or back in stock. They’re just following the motto: If you have the non-toxic clothes, the MCS shoppers will come.
So, getting back to one size fits all. I was asking myself, “Why, if it’s one size fits all, why don’t these clothes fit Terry?” (I have the same problem on the other end of the scale, but let’s not get into that.) So I looked up one size fits all in the dictionary and found that it should actually be one size fits most, since the clothes only accommodate a range of sizes, not all sizes. Well, that explains everything! If it was one size fits most, they should have said so. Which, I guess they did when they said, “Only comes in large.”
Book 5 My World of Clothes
Written by Dale Stubbart Blessed by Terry Stubbart