I spuddle.

So as you probably know, I buy a lot of my clothes at J.Crew. (FINAL SALE!) (Seriously, this is the most astounding sale ever, and if you have coupons, you can get that $200 sweater you’ve coveted all season for something like $23.99.) The funny thing is that when I hear OTHER people say they buy all their clothes at J.Crew, I inwardly flinch and write them off as a certain type of person and I don’t know why because I AM THAT PERSON but I sort of blame an old friend of mine, who is no longer a friend, who would have a visceral spastic reaction when someone said they shopped at J.Crew, sort of an ENTIRE BODY EYE ROLL. This friend, who isn’t a friend at all anymore, went to a trendy “creative” women’s college and wore Converse high tops and actually had the fashion sense (and personality) (not that I’m bitter) of a warthog, a warthog who was better than everyone else and, in fact, disparaged your very existence. She had also perfected the withering look to within an inch of its life and when she withered you, you never forgot it and BECAUSE she was so good at withering, it made the wither seem valid, even though it was almost always completely ridiculous and entirely based in her own insecurity.

J.Crew makes decent clothes — as in pants with enough inseam that people who are not 5’5″ can wear them without looking like assholes — and some of my nicest clothes come from there including my wedding dress*. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m always secretly embarrassed when I hit the “buy” button on the J.Crew final sale website. When I’m wearing stuff from J.Crew, I invariably lie to myself and pretend that I’m mixing and matching it in with my otherwise quirky and, let’s face it, downright Parisian wardrobe (read: older stuff from previous seasons of J.Crew) and I am a wildly creative fashionista and not just someone who appreciates the safe, unimaginative world of J.Crew and all that it represents, which seems to be a lot, depending on who you ask. I guess what it at least partially represents is mass-market American-ism. It used to be that J.Crew clothes were a bit unique and then BAM, just like that, they became ubiquitous, not quite so much here in Canada where we have no J.Crew stores but in the US certainly. And like everything else that is spread too thin (I’m looking at YOU, Gap), it’s almost tired before it even leaves the store because we ALL get the catalogue and we’ve all seen it already.

Bearing all this in mind, I gleefully opened my latest catalogue and fell in love with this:

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Which you are no doubt looking at and going, “Huh?” but in the catalogue picture it’s shown with rolled up khakis and layers of these necklaces which I also NEED, long stringy necklaces with crystals in different shapes and sizes.   There is no reason for wanting this ensemble, in fact, it’s insane because I have no idea when I’ll need to be all decked out in bohemian preppy, but there you have it.   I’m waiting for you, final sale.

Inexplicably, I also want these:

And this:

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And I want to wear them ALL AT THE SAME TIME with my favourite (new) beat up jeans.   I do!  But I won’t.   Because I must accept the fact that the models in the J.Crew catalogue are shockingly, alarmingly young and they can do this “look” and I cannot because I would look like a jerk with bad fashion sense and too much access to J.Crew.   BUT I will probably eventually get at least one or maybe two of those things.   On the final sale.   Because I can’t help it, the clothes speak to me and not just the pants with the long inseams, but all of it.    I’ve been wondering a bit WHY as I fancy myself to not be a sheep and you could argue that J.Crew dresses the sheep of the nation and I’ve realized what the answer is.   The answer, my friends, is Nantucket.

What the HELL are you talking about?  you may ask, and that would be a normal response.   Your normal response proves your normalcy, so yay for you!

Here’s the thing.   I’ve never been to Nantucket.   You probably haven’t either because really, who has?   Some people, certainly, but not EVERYONE.   Nantucket isn’t exactly Disneyland.   And I actually don’t even want to go to Nantucket, I want to live there.  But!   Better than that!  I don’t want to live in a Nantucket that actually exists, I want to live in Faketucket, which is a place that exists only in my head and on the pages of the J.Crew catalogue.    It’s like Nantucket, in that it’s an island (er, is Nantucket an island?) and there are beaches, but they are the wide sandy beaches featured in that movie with Diane Lane and Richard Gere which I didn’t watch but once saw a preview for.   And the beaches are fringed with those long grasses you get only on the East Coast and the houses are all covered with shakes and have white trim and… lilac bushes.   That’s right.   I said it.   Lilac bushes.  I’m allergic to lilacs, yes.   That’s true.   But I don’t care.   Maybe in Faketucket, the lilacs do not make me sneeze and inadvertently wet myself and throw my back out (again).   This is a fantasy, people, try to play along.

Along the beach there are run down cafes peopled with charming locals and sheds with the paint peeling off.    The locals are friendly and wildly funny, much like a colony of stand-up comics but without the chronic depression and alcoholism.   The summer people are not preppy assholes who wear madras because they are idiots with too much money and no taste, they are instead a fun bunch of hard-working entrepreneurs who wear madras in such a way as it looks fresh from the pages of French Vogue, except actually wearable instead of just being silly.   The weather is always nice, everyone is happy, the kids don’t scream and eat too much sugar and then throw up, instead they build elaborate sand cities on the endless beaches and ALL IS RIGHT WITH THE WORLD.

That, my friends, is what J.Crew represents.  Sort of.   I mean, not really anymore, they’ve really strayed from their preppy roots, but I think it’s why I started coveting J.Crew as a teenager and still have never let go.

I love you, J.Crew.   I’m sorry about the whole inward flinch thing I mentioned earlier.   Seriously.   It’s not YOU, it’s ME.   Totally.

* A dress that I bought before JCrew got into bridal and started making really really gorgeous gowns, it’s just a white dress, floor length, which I love but have YET TO WEAR for reasons that are too numerous to mention here. Oh, OK, it’s because I’m always pregnant and/or busy and we haven’t got married yet but we will very soon. Stay tuned.

** Although I would not buy this in orange for a lot of reasons including the one wherein orange makes me look like I’m recovering, but only barely, from tuberculosis or some kind of wasting disease or maybe cirrhosis AND the one wherein the other day The Bun said, “Why are you wearing an orange shirt?   You are not a kid.”   And although the J.Crew model IS probably a kid and therefore looks cute and such in the orange shirt, I would look less idiotic in the neutral option.    Also, I MUST have the orange (sorry, “copper”) sneakers and everyone knows that a bit of orange copper says, “I have a quirky zest for life!” but a lot of orange says, “Help me!  I have been victimized by fashion and need to be saved by TLC’s What Not To Wear, ASAP!”   Which wouldn’t be such a bad thing, come to think of it.   A trip to New York?   Shopping?   A makeover?   YES, PLEASE.

*** I realized after I posted this picture that it isn’t the jacket I was originally coveting but on closer examination, it’s a more grown up version of the one I had been eyeballing so probably a better choice as I am, you know, like totally, a grownup.    Sort of.

Filed under: Shopping