Gone Shoppin.

Once I started paying wholesale prices for shirts, I couldn’t comprehend going back to buying retail. Oddly, I’ve never been a big clothes shopper in general.

I do go to American Apparel retail stores, but only to check color. But recently, as certain garments of mine have been rendered threadbare through cumulative time of dedicated service to covering my ape-like body from prying eyes, I went shopping.

I went to a mid-range chain where initially I found little to surprise me. Why anyone would screen print argyle onto a shirt I simply do not understand. If you’re going to screen print, and you can do whatever you want with three or four colors, I’d go ahead and do something a little different. But you might have guessed that.

After finding a few inconsequential fashion choices that aren’t available via my wholesale accounts, I wandered through the ‘other side’ of the store, which contained all the various apparel not related to my age or gender.

The kids section blew me away.

I know they are spending pennies on labor in a foreign country because for these wearables, they’d have to. I saw layers of screen printing, appliqué, and embroidery all over the place and even screen printed appliqué that then was embroidered to the shirt. One of them pictured here again with the argyle, what up, but still. I was floored.

There were racks and racks of crazy stuff and combinations that I’ve never seen anywhere. There was nothing like this in the adult sections of this same store. Have I missed websites or stores that have this sort of gear for adults? Is there some main stream aversion to complicated, layered decoration on adult shirts?