Another Fashion Post

On the subject of Winter Boots: make certain that the top of the boot reaches at least as high on the shin as the bottom of one's coat, preferably several inches higher. Otherwise your legs will freeze. All else is subject to Personal Taste.

Pretty Lady is sorry to be so unwontedly terse, but indeed she has so bored her intimates upon the subject of Boots that she genuinely fears to discuss them. When Pretty Lady opens her closet, she is greeted by an embarrassment of boots, from Curly to Combat, these being the only item of footwear which flatter her feet, or at least camouflage them. The day Pretty Lady is reborn into a body equipped with size-five feet and Balanchine insteps, is the day she goes hog-wild over frivolous high-heeled sandals; until then, she thumps around like Nanook of the North, and is content.

No, Pretty Lady is not here to rail about her feet; she is here to rail about Old Navy. The price marker-downers at Old Navy must have peeped into Pretty Lady's closet, and read her mind; they must have noticed and remarked upon the dearth and dire necessity of three-quarter sleeve T-shirts with curly, fanciful, obscure slogans on them. At any rate, Old Navy provided a gloriously chaotic mountain of these necessary shirts, and Pretty Lady tried on almost all of them. Eventually she narrowed them down to six or eight. (Tragically, the one with the Damselfly on it only came in XXL.)

And they weren't marked down at all.

The outrage! Every other miserable, pedestrian, flimsy item of clothing in the place was 50% off! Old Navy knows upon which side its bread is buttered; it knows the score. It knows that for the most part, it sells humdrum clothes that fall apart after one season. For the most part, this is fine, because the price and style are right.

But $16.50 is still a little steep.

Nevertheless, Pretty Lady curbed her impulse to toss her pile of groovy T-shirts atop a rack of uninspiring white pants (what are they thinking? Nobody who shops at Old Navy takes Caribbean cruises, at least not the ones who shop on Flatbush) screwed up her wallet, and paid for three of them. Champs Elysees, Cafe de la Cité (yes, she's actually been there) in bright yellow; LILLE 29, Olympic Training, in pink and white; and Be(ar) Aware, Safety Comes First! Cleaning Your Campground After Every Meal Will Help Curb The Interest Of Bears, in chocolate brown.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled, esoteric matters.