Apparently there aren’t that many corduroy skirts out this autumn. Boden had a few options, more than I wanted to spend, Patagonia had one, Garnet Hill had one. And White House Black Market had one.  Ultimately that’s what I went for, and a week ago I placed the order online.

That’s when it got a little weird. When I got the email, it said my corduroy skirt was backordered, and there’d been no indication of that on the website. In addition, even though it’d been backordered, they’d charged me for it. So I did something I never do: I called them.

This is where the amazing part starts. When I called, I got a woman named Sharon, who, when looking at my order, agreed it sounded odd. She put me on hold, called the warehouse and got nowhere, got back on the line with me where she apologized, said there wasn’t any information, but she’d contact me if there was any change.

All of this is pretty typical, right? I’ve worked customer service before, and that’s what we’d say to get off the phone. Normally we had our hands about as tied as the customer, and finding out information is hard, takes time, and we’re answering the phone all day. I didn’t expect to hear back.

Except I did. On Monday of this week, Sharon called me to let me know that she still hadn’t tracked down the reason for the weirdness, but she’d talked to her supervisor, and she thought the skirt was being quality-checked. Was there anything else she could do for me? I was too surprised to say anything other than no, and thank you.  I definitely thought that would be the last time I’d hear from her.

But no. On Wednesday I got another call from Sharon to let me know that my skirt was being shipped out that day, and I’d get tracking confirmation by the next day via e-mail. (Which I did, and the skirt will be here this weekend or early next week) (and will hopefully be in my mailbox because I hate going to the post office)

This is amazing customer service. No one does this anymore; I didn’t do this when I worked customer service, and more than anything else, no matter how the skirt works out, Sharon is the number one reason I’ll shop at White House Black Market again. That’s marketing you can’t buy.

This despite the fact that I don’t take pictures of myself and in fact don’t have the ability to do so – no full-length mirror, roommate is still in bed when I leave for work.

So there aren’t going to be daily outfit posts, and there probably won’t be daily posts, but I’ll be posting throughout the month about the challenges of dealing with only 30 items of clothing, and trying to compose 30 different outfits from that.  I don’t think it’s going to be that much of a challenge to live with a smaller wardrobe – I picked out 30 items in 20 minutes last night, and I didn’t really have to think much about it – but where I will be challenged is coming up with 30 different outfits. I repeat stuff a lot; not every week, but there are outfits I wear several times a month.

Here’s what we’re working with:

Dresses:

- Black cap sleeved cowl-neck black shift dress

- Brown sleeveless thick jersey fit-and-flare dress

- Teal wool jersey fit-and-flare dress

Skirts

- Denim pencil skirt

- Brown tweed pencil skirt

- Orange corduroy a-line skirt

- Black and white tweed miniskirt

Pants

- Distressed straight-leg jeans

- Pale gray wide-leg flannel trousers

- Camel herringbone straight-leg wool trousers

Jackets

- Black blazer

- Navy pinstripe blazer

Tops:

- Blue and white striped boyfriend buttondown

- Gray long sleeve tee

- Purple long sleeve tee

- Pink henley tee

- Dark blue heathered v-neck tee

Sweaters

- Magenta short-sleeved cashmere sweater

- Green cowl-neck short-sleeved sweater

- Teal cowl-neck dolman-sleeved sweater

- Cerise turtleneck sweater

- Brown cardigan with black elbow patches

Shoes

- Red patent wedge heels

- Black leather wedge heels with patent details

- Purple Pumas

- Black croco knee boots

- Brown knee boots

- Brown Frye Harness 12R

Accessories – belts, scarves, tights, jewelry, bags – are unlimited, so I’ll be filling out this list of mostly basics with those. I’m hoping that this will help me get rid of some clothes I don’t need, and figure out new ways of wearing the ones I have. Mostly, I’m hoping this will help me buy a few less pounds of disposable clothing and move towards a closet of fewer but better quality clothing. I think I’m pretty wasteful of both my own money and the resources used to produce clothing, and I’d like to become more conscientious about that in the next 30 days. What do I really need, and what do I just want?

I plan to finish February with a better idea of that.

I will not wear heels with bootcut jeans at work on a Monday, dammit, and you can’t make me. I’ll wear my cowboy boots instead.

Sure would be awfully nice if I could wear flats, though. Do I need to buy short length to do that?

In fact, I am not entirely sure when the next occasion calling for formalwear will even be, but let’s disregard those little details:

This is it for 2009, people. No more shopping until 2010.

I can always wear it to the opera in April, I suppose.

My favorite pair of shoes for the past two years have been a pair of magenta patent AK Anne Klein flats that I bought at Piperlime for $80. This was pretty expensive for me at the time – I was just getting into fashion and style stuff – but it paid off in this case. I wore them at least once a week, sometimes twice, in summer and winter, and for the past six months I’ve been wearing them despite the fact that I’ve actually worn a hole in one of the heels. But at some point you have to let go, and so for several months I’ve been looking for a replacement. Criteria: Flat, shiny, in a fun color that I can wear with a lot of things, and fairly inexpensive. I’m poor, people. I’ve worked only four days a week most of the year and was on furlough for August. Shoes over $100 weren’t happening.

It took forever to find anything; AK Anne Klein has an almost identical shoe this year, but it’s in yellow, which isn’t a favorite color of mine. There was a dearth of deep pinks and greens. A lot of purple, which I love, but nothing quite right – either was too lavender (I own some lavender peep toes already) or not patent, or absolutely perfect and $180 or something. I was beginning to wonder if I was going to need to tape over the hole or something.

Okay, not really. But still, it was dire.

Then someone in the comments of this post recommended Marais USA, and I went to check them out. They don’t have much in the way of selection – they’re a small, NYC-based firm that’s only been around for a few years – but what they do have is really cute, and I immediately began lusting after all three of their flats, especially in the Suit color. When the Mulberry Mary Jane went on sale at Urban Outfitters, I immediately bought them.

The shoes.

They were cute, they fit, and when they arrived, I wore them the very next day with tights and a black dress, and they looked good! With one minor issue: I hadn’t been walking for five minutes before the glue holding the heels on started coming undone.

What I should have done, of course, was ship them back to UO for a refund, but dammit, I really liked these shoes, it had taken me months to find a pair that I actually would wear, and I needed new flats and didn’t want to spend another three months looking again. So I Googled a cobbler, found one literally around the corner from my office, and took them in with me the next day, where we had the following conversation:

Me: The heels are coming off these shoes.

Cobbler: They just started doing this? You should take them back.

Me: Um…*mumbles something semi-coherent about final sales or lost receipts*

Cobbler: …Okay. So you want me to just glue them back on, or put on new ones?

Me: New ones, I think.

And fifteen dollars and two days later, I had them back, with new heels nailed on. I’ve worn them three times since; I might even wear them again today when I go out to buy my contact lenses, so in my mind the extra money was worth it. Not sure I’ll buy from Marais again, of course; the shoes are cute (especially the two-tone flats coming out this month) and I like supporting local start-ups, but…I don’t want to spend an extra $15 every time. My cobbler already thinks I’m nuts.

I guess we’ll see.

I know, it seems like a little thing, but for me there’s nothing more uncomfortable than the Slowly Creeping Downward Feeling of tights that won’t go all the way up. I actually think it goes back to a solitary incident in junior high school choir when a pair of pantyhose slipped down to the point where someone pointed it out and said they were trying to find a replacement.

I, of course, was completely humiliated and immediately ran for the bathroom to try to yank them back up again. But I digress.

This happened this morning with a brand new pair of dark brown tights. At first, I thought it would be bearable, but slowly – as I stood in the overcrowded NJ lightrail, and then the overcrowded PATH train, and then the overcrowded number 4 subway – I began to feel the inevitable pull of gravity and the first thing I did when I got to work was run for the bathroom to strip them off.

The second thing I did was logon to We Love Colors and order four pair of thigh highs. (I got black, brown, charcoal, and rubine, which is kind of a dark purple color.)

I’ve never actually worn thigh highs before; they aren’t readily available at, like, Target, which is where I generally buy most of my socks and tights (although the creeping pair this morning was $10 and from Sock Dreams, so they don’t even have the excuse of being cheap), but I have been interested in them for a while for just this reason.  I held off because I was using the stomach-minimizing power of full tights, but if they aren’t staying up, it’s not like they’re working for that, are they?

So stockings it is. Fingers crossed that they don’t end up being a separate but equal pain in my ass.

Let’s all pause for a moment to mourn the Vaguely Gothic Fairy costume that I was going to march down Sixth Avenue in. On the plus side, the parade’s at 8:30 pm on the last day of October, and I probably would have frozen my ass off.

The linchpin of any fairy costume: Purple and Silver Fairy Wings, $20 at Ricky's

So awesome. On the other hand, traveling on three trains with them was pretty much guaranteed to be a pain in the ass.

A skirt long enough to prevent flashing: Black Tulle Tutu, $25 at Sisters of the Moon Design

I may eventually get this anyway, just because it’s that kickass.

Black Turtleneck (It’s October in New York, people), fishnet stockings, Doc Martens, and perhaps most importantly:

Purple Eyeliner: Rockstar, $17 at Urban Decay

On the other hand, I’m not sure I could bring myself to spend that much money on eye makeup anyway.

I spend way too much time getting food out of the little serrated teeth. Way too much time.

Naturally, I chose the BIG one.

Am gamely resisting the urge to brandish it menacingly at irritating consultants.

In between the 59th St station and Crate & Barrel is Bloomingdales and two blocks of retail stores, all choked with after work Christmas crowds.  I thought I was going to kill people, and by the time I got home there was no way in hell I was going to make the torte that night; I got up and made it in the morning instead, and I decided I was going to do as much of my Christmas shopping online as possible this year.  Since I spent Thanksgiving alone in my apartment (cue teeny tiny violin music), I started mine yesterday while sitting on my bed eating the aforementioned torte.  And it feels awesome to not only have to fight through the crowds but to have it shipped straight to my parents’ house so I don’t have to worry about it.

I seriously have a thing for cute sheets and blankets and beds.  Quite possibly because I love to sleep (I do, really), but it surpasses any love I have for technicolor flat shoes or handbags or chunky jewelry.  It doesn’t surpass my love for romance novels, however, as the piles on my floor and nearly full bookcases will attest.

Anyway, in the interest of sharing, here is what will be on my bed when JC Penney gets around to sending it to me.  It’s teal, which is my favorite color – probably part of the reason I gave in.

At least it was on sale?