Dressing room or Depressing room?

I ventured into a store recently, beckoned by a brown silk tunic dress that was gorgeous...at least in theory. By "in theory", I mean that it looked fabulous hanging serenely on the wall of the boutique; and I'm 100% sure that someone with the proportions of a catwalk model would look perfect in it.

Being neither a wall nor a catwalk model, I had my reservations, though the dress definitely compelled me to try it on. After years of trying to pull off styles that were more appropriate for someone with a far different body type, I've learned to wear my clothes, and not to let the clothes wear me. When it came to this little silk dress, I wasn't yet sure who was going to be the wearer and who was going to be the wearee in the relationship!

I pulled the dress down from its roost on the wall, heading towards the nearest store clerk, a bored-looking girl intently studying her chipped manicure.

"I'd like to try this," I said, and she blinked her assent, sweeping past me towards the back of the store.

"Here you go," She said, gesturing towards a change room. I happily locked myself in, shedding shoes, jeans and top and throwing the billowy silk number over my head. After a brief and heroic struggle to get all my limbs through the right holes, I came up for air and breathlessly turned towards the mirror. Only there wasn't one.

Now, there I was, trapped in a small, white room that may as well have been a cell at the nearest prison for the criminally insane. My brain took a moment to register the obvious truth as I smoothed my hands uncertainly over the fabric that floated around my knees...this was one of those places with outside mirrors. Grrr!

I'm sorry, but to me, a changing room should be a private sanctuary, a place to quietly contemplate your potential purchases in front of your very own mirror within your very own four walls. A place where you feel free and perfectly comfortable twisting, turning, bending over, jumping around and otherwise making an idiot of yourself to ensure that the clothes you're wearing experimentally will suit your needs.

I'll never understand the whole outside mirror thing.

So there I was, almost ready to ditch the dress without even seeing it on me...but I bit the bullet and creaked the dressing room door open, stepping uncertainly into the bright lights of the store. I was faced with four things at once:

-the gum-snapping store clerk ready to swoop down on any cast-offs or capitalize on any potential commissions;
-a trio of impossibly tall, willowy teens giving me that head-to-toe contemptuously amused stare that only tall and willowy teens can give;
-a bored looking boyfriend slumped in a chair by the dressing room area;
-and my own reflection.

Now, when I had envisioned myself in the dress, I think that I'd mentally extended my limbs to roughly Nicole Kidman length and width. Yes, there I was, striding confidently down the sidewalk in my new dress and a great pair of stilettos. The tunic dress was so effortlessly sexy, so fluid, so chic.

The tunic dress looked like an upturned potato sack on me! Its A-line hit me at the knee, making me look like some kind of shapeless, demented 5-year old in a party dress. I looked totally moronic, and 5 pairs of eyes were registering the fact at the same time as me. I retreated, red-faced, to my mirror-less cell, throwing off the frock as fast as possible and handing it to the stone-faced clerk before fleeing the store. Oh the public humiliation! I still cringe when I remember that moment...

Now listen to my plea, o ye who are responsible for dressing room design! Please, put the mirrors on the inside of the rooms, to save myself the future embarrassment of public displays of what not to wear; and to save my "public" from the terror of being subjected to such a show!

Here are a few more tips for good dressing room design:

-invest in good lighting. I do not, in any circumstances, wish to be harshly reminded of my body's nooks and crannies by your hideous flourescent lights!

-skinny mirrors. You know what I'm talking about!

-please, get those multi-dimensional mirrors, the ones with three panels so you can see yourself from different angles. What works from the front may not work from the back, after all!

-please make sure the rooms are big enough that I can flail around with various limbs, trying to figure out how to put on a stylistically complex piece or struggling to get out of something too small!

So yeah, that's my dressing room declaration, and I think I'd have a whole legion of women behind me in requesting, at the very least, that they be left in peace and privacy to try on their clothes in the presence of their own personal mirror, out of sight of prying eyes!