Great Article

If Comfort Were the Top Criterion for Selling Womenswear, Jimmy Choo Would Be Out of Business’



Christina Binkley makes many excellent points in her Wall Street Journal story about why women should shop more like men.

If comfort were the top criterion for selling womenswear, Jimmy Choo would be out of business. Unlike men, women frequently settle for garments that don't fit well and don't feel good.

Sometimes, women have little choice. It has long been an irritating truth that men are offered better-quality clothes for lower prices. Many fashionable women's clothes — including plenty sold at luxury prices — are made relatively cheaply. "Women do get shortchanged in the market," says Patrick Gigliotti, a menswear salesman at the venerable Boyd's Philadelphia department store. Some women who value well-made clothing have even resorted to shopping in menswear departments.


We thought a lot of those women just want to feel cool when someone compliments them on an item and asks where they got it, so they can reply, "Oh, it's a men's small." Anyway, what follow in Binkley's story are many useful guidelines on how to tell if a garment is well made, which are absolutely worth reading in full. But maybe the point of Binkley's story isn't really that women need to shop more like men, but that they just need to be more discerning overall. A man who shops (and not all do, let's not forget) tells Binkley that "Men love the story" of where an article of clothing comes from. Do they? Are men really going into the stores and asking "Where was this made?" And are they really examining the seams of their pants and then squatting in the dressing rooms to make sure they fit well? Or are they going into stores, glued to their significant other's side, waiting for her to pick things out, and trying them on in the dressing room so she can decide if he should buy it? Also, Binkley forgets to mention that women should probably avoid shopping at stores called "Amsterdam" or "Mystique." Now that's something most men wouldn't do.

To Dress Well, a Woman Should Shop Like a Man [WSJ]

.