Happy Shopping News

A couple of new developments on stores front this week that mean that against the prevailing tide there new places for non-standard sizes in the Glasgow area to find clothes.

Firstly there is a new mega-sized Sainsbury's near the Braehead Shopping Centre. Now mostly I turn my nose up at supermarket clothes, lousy styling and lousier trading policies leaving you wondering who is really paying for those £2 t-shirts. However Sainsbury's are very upfront about their sourcing and claim that their cotton t-shirts are fairly traded. The stuff is cheap, but not pile em high cheap. I bought a lovely tweed skirt for £25 and would have expected it to be priced about double that in Monsoon. The clothing range is also laid out in a spacious nicely-lit special area of the store so it avoids that jumble sale feel that you sometimes get from supermarket clothing. The Sainsburys TU range goes up to 22 in the mainstream range and includes a "Grace" range sized from 18-28.

Then in Glasgow today I visited the new H&M emporium that has taken over the ground floor of Buchanan Galleries. And Huzzah they have reinstated their BiB clothing which has not been available anywhere in the West of Scotland for a while now. This range tends towards the boxy and the word acrylic appears on labels at lot more often than I care for. However there are some very wearable things and its still its a major boost for fashion aliens to be able to walk into such a mainstream shop and just pick up a little number from their shelves.

I'd love to show a couple of pictures from these ranges but sadly neither Tu or BiB have a dedicated website that shows the range which just seems a bit odd really. You need to do actual shopping the old-fashioned way to source this stuff, and you can pick up your bread and milk at the same time.

My New Winter Coat

I spend a lot of time surfing the web looking for new sources of distinctive clothes in larger sizes. I keep coming across the same 10-12 sites usually connected to the same mail-order group.
However it was my pleasure recently to find Curvety which I came across as one of those banner adds that skulk annoyingly at the side of your google search.
This site has a small but mostly well chosen selection of Clothes in sizes 16 up to 36 in some styles. As an example of how lovely their stock can be I direct you to the picture of my new winter coat.
Had I seen this in Monsoon or Planet I would be whooping for joy. Look at the lovely mismatched button detail and the flattering semi-princess shape with no annoying flappy belts or bits that just move around on larger bodies. I will watch this site with interest and hopefully purchase more from them