I've seen people wearing a style of dress I like. What on earth is it (dubious description contained within)?

[ShowOfHands]

Okay, so I'm not allowed to post on s&b as I am a fashion pariah. Undoubtedly, there is an alarm going off at hq and later I'll be taken round the back and shot. But, can you help me first?

I see the Great British Public looking effortlessly stylish as I plod past them in a state that can only be described as 'clothed at least'. I keep seeing the same dress. Well not the same dress. I'm certain they're just similar dresses or there's some kind of rent a dress shop near my house and this is in the popular range. Either way, I like it/them.

I'm babbling. I don't belong here you see.

It's a maxi dress. That much I know. But long. Really long. Like touch the floor long. And generally it's dark in colour. Usually black, sometimes grey. And it's not all flowy and billowy like a game gal in a sanitary product advert. It's clingy but not. It sort of looks like it's made of a heavier/thicker material than the cotton/silk maxi dresses. It sort of pools at your feet and calves. You can see people have legs when they're wearing them.

Does anybody know what I'm talking about? I see them all over the place.

I'm probably not describing it very well. I am aware that what I am essentially asking is if you can distinguish one long black dress from another. I can't. Clearly.

Our TK Maxx is alright. The dungeon one at least. You go down the escalators with your eyes shut, feel your way round to the back of the lifts without looking at any 'fashion items' and open your eyes once you feel the cool, hard steely reassurance of the kitchen items. Cheap le creuset in hand, you repeat the same method of entrance but in reverse, being careful not to trip and break your new cooking pot and ramekins.

It's manageable really. You just need a plan.

Thats cheered me up after a bath with all 3 dc's - on what planet did I think that would end without tears?

Good plan of attack for TKMaxx there.

Well done SOH.

You do know you need a racer back bra now. Don't you?

TKMaxx is good for mens clothes actually - maybe because they have fewer types of clothes.

Go to t-shirts, go to your size, flick through 500 yards of t-shirts and pick out the ones you want to try on. Easy.

SOH, I am impressed that you only took 7 minutes!

I love your writing style. You're very funny!

oh I do love a SOH thread - such reliably excellent prose

(also little trip down memory lane to my teenage haunts. I believe the st stephen's street New Look used to be miss selfridge or possibly etam)

Read the entire thread and STILL laughing at this: "You can see people have legs when they're wearing them."

Glad you found something suitable! H&M is usually full of the stuff which is everywhere, at decent quality, but cheap.

Their children's clothes are nice too. I'm sure I spend far more time shopping for DS than I ever do for myself.

Now feel relieved there is somebody else in the world with my view on shopping its my idea of hell too. I quite fancied a maxi dress, eventually went to the shops to try one on, looked more pregnant that when i WAS pregnant, and left empty handed. That's my shopping venture for 2010 done...

Racer back bra? Oh for the love of all that is good and holy, noooooooo. You can't make me go back there.

everythingiseverything, I never said this and you'll never make it stick, but I feel the same way about PB. It's the mere thought that he'd go all Cornish Viking in the bedroom. The way he handles his fiddle. But, as I said, you won't ever get me to repeat that. Will be seeing them on Sunday, well me and 12,000 other folkies but I'm so ridiculously excited that even the idea of shopping for a racer back bra can't bring me down.

St Stephen's is usually haunted by the souls of people who lost their brave fight for continued existence in the terrifying daily crush of Poundland's doorway but it's nice that you have fond memories OrientCalf.

at excellent prose. Is that French for rambles on a lot?

oh god, didn't say I liked it, just that I remembered it

remember hanging around outside superdrug waiting for friend to finish snogging her bf, with lots of people having to dodge round them tutting 'in the middle of the street'

SoH, you are ver' ver' funny! But please don't mention ramekins in front of Slubber - she's on a mission, you know

I wonder if they named the range burnt orange knowing that one day I would buy them and try and cook soufflé in them? Slubbers and her intervention, with all due respect, can bog off.

Snogging outside Superdrug is a rite of passage. It's stage 2 after nicking Collection 2000 lipstick from aforementioned store. It's a disenfranchised youth programme.

Think it used to be an etam btw. Remember being dragged there as a child to buy trousers. Next was C&A then as well. Gives the illusion of improvement without actually attaining it doesn't it?

Why did the library burn down and the shoddy clothes shops just rumble on?

C & A had just closed when I moved here. Etam is where Miss Selfridge is now, next to Lakeland.

I am a little bit in awe of T K Maxx tbh, have you ever spent 1/2hr in the handbag section? Once the emos have had their fill of Chapelfield & The Forum they can be found in the shoes.

Life is too short for racer-back bras.

You don't need a racer-back bra just those clear things that haul your straps in to make it look like one. M & S usually sell them off for about 50p.

Voila!

I have this one, it is flattering with big knickers and flip flops

For home made racer back bra, I use the wire twisty things that you get with freezer bags. Or the ones I save that hold toys in their boxes that take hours to unfasten.

Perhaps I should have namechanged.

Love this thread.

Show Of Hands I have no idea where to get your dress but I need to tell you I saw the girl yesterday.
She was at Chessington World of Adventures in a queue. She had the dress, short denim jacket, funky beads.
I got very excited, squealed to dh "it's showofs dress I must find out where it's from". Dh was mortified and refused to let me ask the girl. So if you never find your dress I give you permission to hunt my dh down and hurt him.

ShowOfHands, you are lovely. I know exactly which dress you mean and your description was splendid. I like shopping, but these days I do most of it online. Let me introduce you to ASOS.

They have three pages of what you are looking for and they have a sale on . And no need to trawl through yards of badly organised clothes at TKMaxx. Good luck!