A Summer Fashion Bullseye

Shopping for casual summer fashion is right up there with several of my other most detested shopping tasks: 

1. Shopping for jeans
2. Shopping for bras
3. Shopping for swimwear

I’m a problem child when it comes to summer fashion. I don’t wear shorts. I don’t own one pair. Not one. Shorts look dumb on me. I am thick through the middle with chicken legs. Not a good look for shorts. Ever. At my most desperate I won’t wear shots. Ever. Just to be clear. Not ever.

And I am busty, or to put it another way. I got a big rack. Big racks don’t work in cami’s with shelf bras or halter tops or strapless dresses. And I have a bit of a tummy. Some call it the “menopooch”. One of my besties calls it “the fopa” (pronounced foo-pah),  which translates into the “fat over pussy area”. Yeah it’s lewd, but it’s also shockingly accurate.

So basically I need summer fashion that is a v-neck/scoop neck, can accommodate a bra with reinforced steel girders, floats away from the tummy a little and is stylish without breaking the bank. And I want to be able to wash it and line dry. Dry cleaning is unacceptable. Basically I want it all.

I decided I wanted some dresses to fill the gap in my casual summer wardrobe. I work art shows. I sit at a lot of baseball games. I want to look fun, stylish and effortlessly casual when it 95 degrees out. And so I began my summer dress hunt.

I tried Athleta.com which is an arm of the Gap conglomerate of stores. Very cute stuff. I get their catalog. Clearly I failed to notice all models are 5’11, with 2% body fat and amazing yoga bodies. Bitches. Still I had hope and ordered 3 dresses but nothing fit quite right. And at $59-$89 a pop, the dress should make me look amazing. Not so much with the amazing.

I also tried Soma.com (lingerie arm of Chicos). Very cute stuff. I get their catalog. The models are a little less perfect. I ordered three dresses and struck out swinging. Back they went.

I also tried a few local places and came up empty. I felt defeated, unloved and a summer shopping failure.

And then…I went to Target…not to shop for dresses but for some other random thing, but I stumbled into their women’s department. And there they were…rayon blend dresses with a v-neck, twist knot front with an empire waist that gently floats away from the tummy without looking like a mumu. Score! Well – until I realized it’s July in Wisconsin and everything is thoroughly picked over so my size wasn’t available.

But then I remembered the internet.

Cue angels singing.

Even though it’s July, Target.com had plenty of dresses in my size and color preference.

I wept for joy.

For $60 I bought three totally cute sundresses. For those of you following along at home, that’s $20 per fabulously effortless, wash and wear dress. So happy. And because I must be having a string of amazing luck, I also stumbled across an uber cute Karen Kane designer dress, on the yellow dot sale rack, in my size (woot!) at the mall. Yellow dot is code for “so cheap you can’t afford not to buy it”.

So $100 got me 4 dresses which nets out to $25 a dress.

I know! 100% utterly fabulous!