Part doily, part witch

Dress: Net, tank top: Hanes, cardigan: Ann Taylor, gigantic satchel of doom: Domke, shoes: Sensei 1991, beaded necklace: Aldo, pen necklace: 1928

I call this my part doily, part witch outfit because it looks like an antimacassar that's been sewn onto a black, witch-y skirt. I bought this dress from Net, which is more or less Taiwan's answer to H&M (we don't have H&M here, even though a bunch of other Asian countries do. Boohoo.). My husband Ron, who has live in Taipei for a total of almost eight years at this point, says that Net's quality has gone down precipitously since he first arrived here. He still has a couple shirts bought from Net five years ago or so that have held up pretty well, but their latest men's shirts are made of lousy fabric with buttons poorly sewn on.

I've had bad luck with their dresses as well. I bought two jersey dresses and both of them developed the dreaded butt sag (you know, when you sit down for a couple of hours, stand up and realized that you now have a balloon of fabric dangling from your rear end) the first day I wore them. This is totally a tangent, but the first time one of my jersey dresses developed butt sag (it was from H&M), I thought "whoa, is my butt really that lethal?" But I've seen saggy dresses on really skinny women (not to mention saggy elbows, saggy knees...), so it's clearly an indication of quality (not that that's any comfort when I'm stuck trying to covertly grab fabric with my hands in order to make it look like my dress still fits me). This is one of the reasons I've stopped shopping at stores like Net for the most part, but I do pop in from time to time and I find that it's a good way to experiment with styles that usually wouldn't find their way into my closet. Like this dress for instance. At first I thought it was too casual and the fact that it needs to be worn with a tank top kind of put me off (I don't really understand the point of summer clothing that needs to be worn with layers). But I liked the crochet bodice and lightness of the skirt fabric enough to buy it and I'm glad I did. It's as comfortable as a nightdress but still dressy enough to wear out and not feel like I am totally slumming.

The gigantic satchel is my Domke camera bag. I take it out when I go reporting because I can stuff an SLR camera body, two lens, a recorder and my notebook, along with my wallet, keys, folding hair brush, compact, lipstick, Nars multiple stick, oil absorbing sheets, Chinese-English electronic dictionary and all the other junk I can't leave the house without into it. Sigh. I really need to learn how to streamline my life.