Two Things
Clothing rental and a peek into mall brands past
Welcome to my occasional, when-I-feel-like-it bonus content about secondhand shopping and selling, minor fascinations, passing fancies, and old stuff! This is the same subscription as Just Some Lady and you are (obviously!) free to skip it.
Also, Substack tells me this email may be truncated. If that’s the case, read the browser version, use the Substack app, or click “view entire message.”
I drafted a whole long thing about how I tried a clothing rental service, but here is the gist: I had a promo code for Nuuly, I tried it, it wasn’t that great, the end!
Okay, there is more to it than that: I have a problem with warm-weather shirts, which is that I default to either t-shirts or popover blouses. I suppose this works, but it is a little boring. Also: I don’t like smocking, ruffles, weird shapes, drawstring ties, puffed sleeves, peplums, or any number of other things many shirts seem to have now. I’m not a huge fan of prints, in general, though I could be talked into one in certain circumstances (i.e., not too wallpaper and not too grandma).
So, when I happened across a good promo code for a month of Nuuly, I decided to give it a try. Maybe I would discover new shirt options! But once I dropped my payment details and started perusing the goods, I realized I’d made a huge mistake, because everything on the Nuuly site looks like this to me:
I eventually found four shirts, a pair of pants, and a dress that Nuuly deems a “bonus item,” meaning you pay an upcharge, which, I have to be honest, Nuuly: sort of defeats the purpose of a monthly fee!
The clothes were fine. They arrived clean but in a state that made it difficult to try them on effectively, which is to say: hella wrinkled. Nuuly ships in these reusable zippered cases, which are sustainable-esque, but they aren’t sealed. So, like… anything could be in there.
The overall quality was fine. (StitchFix was disappointing in this regard, as I recall.) Most of what I chose was from Anthropologie, and I remembered things from Anthropologie running small, but that’s either not true anymore or never was because most everything was too big (a self-own for sure).
I didn’t feel an overwhelming desire to buy any of it, though I liked this shirt, or would have if I’d ordered the correct size:
I liked the pants, which I will steam and wear at least a few times:
Everything else was pretty meh. As for the upcharged dress, it fit really well but was witchier in person than I expected (and fully floor-length on my 5-foot-4-inch self). Also, Nuuly would like to charge you $96 to buy this dress. On the Free People site, it is $19.95 “gently worn and washed from the Nuuly rental program.” Quoi?
I think that if I worked in an office, a rental service would make more sense. It was a fun experiment, but I would rather have my $80 back. If I ever want to try renting again, I might check out Armoire or Rent the Runway.
I was doing an eBay deep dive for 80s shaker-knit sweaters earlier this week when I was hit right across the face with some 80s/90s mall nostalgia: the brand Chaus, which I remember from perusing the sale and clearance racks at May Company throughout middle and high school.
This was an era when, as I recently told my friend Christine, even 14-year-olds dressed like real estate agents. Don’t believe me? Here’s me at age 10 in this secretary-ass outfit and Sally Jessy-sized spectacles:
May Company had its own house brands like Karen Scott, but they also carried Liz Claiborne (I remember this as an “upscale” brand), Sag Harbor (I always thought this was a terrible name for a clothing line and usually called it Sad Harbor), and of course Chaus, which also had diffusion lines like Chaus Sport, which is in fact the label on this very good shaker sweater specimen:
Most of the Chaus repertoire on eBay was not quite as good, though. Like, this isn't the 80s and 90s stuff most people want to bring back. Thinking ahead to fall and feeling cozy? Check out this leaf motif sweater, which will also have you feeling sweaty and itchy, as it’s a mohair/acrylic blend:
One of you needs to buy this sweater vest immediately, though, because holy shit:
This is 100% cotton and $5, so somebody please follow the directive of the September 1987 issue of Seventeen and treat yourself to this crested cardigan.
These so-called lounge pants feel off to me. I certainly remember a lot of floral prints from this time, but I cannot really place these as being trendy at any point, though the high waist and deep pleats feel right. I dunno, correct me if I’m wrong:
Finally, this dress feels like it’s from the latter half of the 1990s. So nostalgic, I can feel myself sweating profusely into the 100% polyester lining! The choker was a good choice by the seller.
The Chaus company, despite having kind of been through it over the years, still exists. You can buy it at Nordstrom! (Sad Harbor also survives, at JCPenney and Amazon). A lot of it looks like the same stuff I pawed through in my youth: inoffensive and a couple of years out of trend. (Though looking at some of the blouses, I am beginning to understand why it is so hard to find shirts without weird shit going on.)
My eBay watch list is very chaotic right now, so I am going to clear some of this stuff off of it and perhaps put together a Gitano wrap-up for another issue very soon. (Gitano: apparently does not exist anymore!)