The window display at Trash and Vaudeville
As Valtinen wrote about in his guest post, it can be hard to find clothing if your style is outside of the mainstream.
And it’s even harder when you wear plus sizes. You can find yourself left out even in a subcultural mecca, like two stores I found while wandering around the East Village: Trash and Vaudeville and Search and Destroy.
They had all things sparkly and studded and leopard, skull-print pants, fuzzy ombre sweaters, pleather pants with corset lacing, petticoats and tutus galore, red plaid bondage pants, brocade military coats, pants and jackets in three colors of iridescent spiderweb print…*
Everything screamed me. And none of it was my size.
It’s not that I expected differently, and it’s not like I could have afforded the clothing right now anyway. But it still hurts to walk into a store filled with clothing I love–clothing that fits my style so much better than most mainstream stores–and know that even if I saved up the money, the most I could hope to buy would be accessories or maybe shoes. (I’ve never tried on a pair of Doc Martens, so I don’t know if they would fit me, but both stores had an impressive array of Docs.)
I really, really miss the old Torrid. If I ever meet the Doctor, I’m definitely going to ask him (among other things) to take me to a Torrid store in the early ’00s. Which, of course, would be overrun with aliens…and would make for some really interesting posts when I got back to 2013!
*You’ll have to take my word for it, as neither store permitted photography. I don’t really get why so many stores in NYC prohibit photos–you’d think it would give them free publicity when the pictures end up on blogs and social networks. One store, Enz’s, even had a sign saying that anyone who takes pictures would have to pay a $45 IP fee, which seems really excessive.
Tutus And Tiny Hats 
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If you do happen to find the Doctor, please pick me up for this Back-In-Torrid-Time journey. I miss their old merchandise.
I brought it up with a clerk and she said I should email the company directly. Apparently the change had to do with demand – which is BS – there must be enough plus size alt. girls to at least keep half their old stuff.
Yeah, that sounds like bullshit. Maybe it’s time to put together an email/Twitter/etc campaign asking Torrid to bring back their goth/punk styles…
About the no photography thing, I believe it is one of two fears: (1) that you’re taking photos as reference material to copy their style, or (2) that you’re casing the joint prior to staging a robbery. Both are probably way exaggerated in the minds of the store owners & management.
Ah, that makes sense!