The not-so-newness of new
Here's an offline story.I bought a new suit a couple of weeks ago from the Gap and wore it for the first time today.
It's hot today. It's scorching type of melting on the pavement grumpy ass drink 10-gallons of bottled water hot today. So, even in the air conditioned office, I was heating up a bit. Not sweating hot. But definitely heating up.
I start to smell something awful and realize that it's coming from me. B.O. Me? Never! (really, I can list a mile of faults, but my body odour is usually quite pleasant)
I rip off the jacket of this new Gap suit and do the sniff test. Then I test myself without the jacket.
I bought a B.O. jacket.
I used to work in women's clothing retail. We had to throw away racks of perfectly good new clothing every year that was ruined by someone trying it on with body odour. You can't dry clean some of those smells out.
Sometimes, however, you can't tell when you buy an item. The scent isn't too strong. The item in question has to heat up to start releasing the odours. This jacket was one of those items.
So, I returned to the Gap where I bought it, but they didn't have any replacement jackets left (not even in the entire city). They offered me a credit, but I quite like the suit. I ended up taking the jacket to the drycleaners where the woman at the counter said she knew 'just the trick'. The Gap manager was lovely about everything and it, clearly, wasn't their fault. I should have done the 'sniff test' when I bought the jacket. She assured me that if the drycleaning doesn't get rid of the odor, Gap would give me a credit for the entire suit.
So, the problem may be solved, but I thought about something I haven't thought about for a while. 'New' clothing isn't really that new. In fact, many bodies have usually tried on the same items I'm purchasing. I love second hand clothing, but I always get it dry-cleaned right away. Why am I not doing that with my new purchases? And then, I started lamenting about sandals. I don't even want to go there.
The truth is that in this 'mass market', we get what we pay for (although sometimes we get much less) . If I want a summer suit that doesn't cost me my entire paycheque, I have to buy clothes tried on by dozens of others (without knowing their grooming habits), that's been sewn together and constructed by women and children slaves in third-world countries. Then I stomp into the Gap at the first sniff of the evidence.
I don't know where I'm going with this, but I do know that I may be cured from being a shop-a-holic after this experience and my subsequent revelations. Maybe I'll learn how to sew.
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