Grace & Style: The Art of Pretending You Have It

VINTAGE GRACE - Shopping Lessons From My Father

When I was in sixth grade, the Limited Too was the shopping mecca. Girls were made and betrayed by that innocent, bubble-letter font with the flower in the logo. If you shopped at Limited Too, you were hot sh*t. And probably too young to use the phrase "hot sh*t" colloquially.

For those of you unfamiliar, Limited Too was the teen/tween branch of the women's clothing store The Limited. It had all of the most colorful, trendsetting clothes an upper-middle-class suburban girl could dream of.

Growing up I could never afford to shop at the Limited Too. Instead, I was limited to Ross Dress for Less, Kohl's, and JCPenney. All very respectable, but they were the Taylor Swift circa 2011 to the Limited Too's Taylor Swift circa now. I watched all the popular girls (who all happened to play soccer) dominate off the field with their sweet sparkle-trimmed cardigans and perfectly plaid miniskirts. And that was just a regular school day; don't even get me started on what they wore to dances. When I went to middle-school dances I danced like no one was watching, because no one was—my outfits weren't as cute as the other girls' and didn't merit the attention. I tried to compete with my ill-fitting Calvin Klein button-up shirts that I got at Ross and my imitation mini-ish skirts I got from the DEB. If you're not familiar with DEB, it's like the trashy stepsister of Forever 21 that takes F21 out for her twenty-first birthday, pumps her full of Jell-O shots, and convinces her to get a bald-eagle tattoo. It's probably just a South Jersey thing, but you're probably familiar with DEB's boyfriend, Spencer's Gifts, or equally trashy BFF, 5-7-9? If you're not, I'm sure your mom is very proud of you.

From fifth through ninth grade, Limited Too was the unspoken divider between the middle-school spoiled royals and the rest of us regulars. You were either a girl who shopped there or you were a girl who shopped the six-for-the-price-of-one earrings at the Claire's across the way spying on the girls in LT hoping they might drop a $75 sweater-vest on their way out. Sidenote: Even though I desperately wanted to be a girl who shopped at LT, I still couldn't understand paying those prices. I'd spent too many years watching my mom use every kind of coupon/special credit card/frequent-buyer scratchoff card/random-discount lifeline to know those prices were stupid. I still believe that a store that doesn't allow you to scratch off a lottery ticket at the checkout for a chance at extra savings is an example of modern-day communism. Shout-out to my scratch-off dealer, Kohl's! And maybe that was part of the allure of LT. It didn't have to offer silly sales or money-saving gimmicks to sell clothes. You either bought their stupidly expensive clothes or you didn't. And I didn't. UNTIL MY TWELFTH BIRTHDAY.

My dad has always been hilariously forgetful and unprepared when it comes to giving gifts. He waits until the very last minute and is never sure what to buy, so you can usually expect a slightly weird but well-intentioned present. One year he got my stepmom a framed picture of a rain forest for her birthday. She's never been to a rain forest. But she does wear a lot of animal-print clothing.

For my twelfth birthday (I was in seventh grade) my dad took me to the mall and told me I could spend $50 anywhere I wanted. In hindsight, this was probably a test to see if I'd choose the science store since he'd taken my younger brother and me there so frequently. But all I could think in that moment was, How am I ever going to decide between the prep-school-inspired sweater-vests with sewn-in collared shirts or the pink plastic crop jackets? LIMITED TOO, IT'S YOU AND ME. . . and my dad. (In reality my dad has a son with a master's from MIT, so at least someone in our family benefited from the science store.)

So my pops and I set off for my popular-making paradise. When we walked in, my ears were blessed with the hypnotic sounds of one Britney Spears and my nose was slapped with the scent of artificial vanilla. At that moment I realized IT'S VERY AWKWARD SHOPPING WITH YOUR FATHER. Did I forget to mention this was our first one-on-one shopping experience while I was in my quiet, awkward, I-don't know-what-to-do-with-my-body-and-my personality phase? My poor dad. The only other fashion experience we'd had together was when he tried to do my hair (pretty terribly) for Christmas when I was six and he was a single dad. My father did not understand the stylistic and social importance of the Limited Too. This was MY OLYMPICS. And conversely I did not understand how to shop with my dad. This was about to be an educational experience for both of us.

It began at an awkward pace. I, overwhelmed by being inside LT with ACTUAL intentions of purchasing something mixed with the unfamiliarity of how to shop with my dad, wandered around the store paralyzed by choices but touching everything. Sidenote: Why do we always TOUCH everything when we shop? Even if I'm in a store and I know it's too expensive and I don't plan on buying anything, I'll still touch a bunch of stuff thinking that equals "shopping." Imagine seventh-grade Grace touching everything while my dad touches nothing so as not to commit himself to needing help from a sales rep and/or looking like a childless pervert. Meanwhile, I'm wrapped up in my fantasy life trying to appear to the other girls shopping there that I know what I'm doing and I clearly shop here all the time and I definitely AM NOT EVEN considering the pathetic looking sales rack tucked in the very back of the store where I could spread my wealth among more than one item, allowing me to show my peers that I own THINGS from Limited Too. Things. Plural.

Pssshhhh. Yeah, right. Not even considering it. I'll be over here touching a ton of pleather jackets. To put it lightly, I WAS FREAKING THE F*CK OUT. There were too many options! I would never have this opportunity again, so I had to make this purchase count.

I scrambled my brain considering every unique feather-trimmed tank and bedazzled sweatsuit they offered. Touch touch touch touch. Velour sweatshirt? Touch. Maybe a denim skort. Touch. Touch. I could practically feel OCD developing.

Until my dad appeared. In an equally exhausted and overwhelmed state, he ushered me over to the front of the store to show me what he thought I should buy: jeans.

JEANS?!

I was in a store that was about to make me Cher from Clueless and he wanted me to buy JEANS?! That's like going to Old Country Buffet and getting a small salad and some water. My dad went on to explain to me, in his usual practical and articulate way, that he believed the jeans had a longer shelf life than any of the other items in the store. He also told me that even though the jeans were $54 he would cover the extra cost. Extra cost?! Jeans?! Looking back on it now, I think my dad felt strongly about the jeans because they were the only item in the store he could recognize and identify as "clothing."

I was so confused. Was my dad trying to sabotage my future rise to preteen

middle-school queen? I didn't care how long the jeans lasted; I wanted to be popular NOW! And no one ogled the soccer girls' jeans. Jeans didn't stand out. Jeans didn't overcompensate. They didn't say "I'm interesting" the way the floral bodysuits did! I was so over-whelmed and tired and embarrassed that I finally just agreed and bought a pair of classic-fit straight-leg jeans for $54 plus tax. On the way home I felt so defeated. I had an opportunity to reach greatness and I settled for jeans. I blew it.

Cut to four years later, my dad KNEW it. For about four years I wore those classic-fit straight-leg jeans once a week, making my T.J. Maxx T-shirts look good and possibly tricking people into thinking I owned more than one pair. And they were the most comfortable pair of jeans I ever owned as an awkward, lanky, puberty-cursed teenager. Those jeans truly were a classic. They lasted for the long haul and stayed in style, until those damn bell-bottoms came back and dominated.

It also turned out that I was never going to be popular in high school. So thinking that some trendy pleather skirt was going to change everything was delusional. If there's one thing my dad knows how to do, it's procrastinate and stick to the basics. He's a simple man who doesn't need frills. Literally. Never once did he suggest investing in frilly lace shorts. My dad taught me the value of a classic. Clothes are like friends and fake plants: invest in the ones that will last. Thanks, Dad—your natural fight-or-flight instincts in a preteen clothing store accidentally taught me a core fashion lesson. Turns out, I'm not limited to trends. I'm so sorry.

---

Grace & Style is on-sale now! Go to www.gracestylebook.com to find Grace on her book tour.