The Tragically Unhip*

I know I started a post with a Seinfeld reference only a few weeks ago, but pardon me for bringing up another. Remember that one where George shows a beautiful woman a picture of Jerry's girlfriend ("Man-hands") and claims she's his dead fiance', and the woman is so impressed that the dead hottie for some reason saw something in his short, fat, bald self that she lets him into the secret forbidden city of gorgeous models? And then he accidentally burns the picture of Man-hands, so he tries to get back into the secret club by using a picture of a magazine model? His plan is foiled, of course, as all of George's plans inevitably are, and in the end, when he tries to return to the secret city, all he finds is an abandoned meat-packing plant.

I'd like to think that I bear little if any resemblance to George Costanza (physically or otherwise), but I can sort of relate to his quest for wonders hidden just beyond his reach. It seems H&M is my meat-packing plant.

It was around this time last year that my friends and I first found out that H&M was coming to Minneapolis. Word spread quickly and enthusiastically. Everyone had a friend or a friend-of-a-friend who had been to H&M in some other lucky city, and the stories they told seemed exaggerated in a way not unlike the legend of William Wallace in Braveheart. Except instead of "William Wallace is eight feet tall!" it was "H&M has hip, trendy clothes at Wal-Mart prices!" "You'll love everything!" "And the clothes fit real people--not just tiny teenaged stick insects!"

From the stories I heard, I thought my shopping dilemmas were finally solved. Finally, there'd be a store selling clothing for me, for my people, for the demographic every designer somehow ignores: the late 20-something/early 30-something who realizes she's too old to pull off most of what's on display at Charlotte Russe or American Eagle, but isn't ready for the frumpy schoolmarm look at Christopher & Banks or the safe and practical middle-aged-friendly cotton separates at Coldwater Creek... for the woman who knows she could probably find something fabulous at Nordstroms, but can't spend half her mortgage payment on a kicky casual skirt or a sexy yet practical tank... for the fashion-clueless and frugal "in-betweeners" like me.

I didn't go to H&M immediately upon its opening last fall. I knew from other new-to-our-market retail openings that the first several weeks it would be a madhouse. The Twin Cities fancies itself a modern, burgeoning metropolis (some go so far as to call it the Mini-Apple, after all), but the level of anticipation and media coverage when something new comes to town shows just how little we really must have going on. When the first Krispy-Kreme opened in a far northwest suburb, the local news stations reported on it for weeks prior and had live coverage of the winding half-mile-long line of donut enthusiasts on the day of the big opening. Dedicated traffic control was assigned to the area, and a shuttle bus ran customers from a nearby strip mall to the store to alleviate parking concerns. I am not kidding about this; it's sad but it's true.

It was a similar story when IKEA opened two years ago. Displaced Swedes' and Germans' eyes lit up in probably the same way mine would if I had to live a Target-deprived existence for years and then got word that the big red bulls-eye was finally coming to town. People who'd been to IKEA in other cities and even those who'd never heard of the Swedish Mafia but believed the tales of wonder told by their friends and co-workers all lined up on opening day to fight their way through the crowds on a quest for clever furnishings.

I waited out the crowds at IKEA, and when I finally went, was hopelessly disappointed. What if I don't want the modern, clean-lines look? Is there nothing for me here then? And why do I have to wind my way through seventeen fake living rooms and kitchens to view the furniture in its natural habitat; can't I just walk directly to a clearly labeled "Bookcases" department and make a selection there? I found the entire IKEA experience disheartening and frustrating.

But H&M! H&M would be different! I held out hope, but I still didn't rush there right away. I waited at least six weeks, and when I finally went sometime last fall, I actually did find several cute things at reasonable price points. Unfortunately, much like the clearance rack at The Gap, the available inventory on these cute items covered only the outer spectrum of the size range. If I'd been a size 4 or 16, I'd have been in luck, but finding 8s and 10s on the rack was an exercise in shopping futility. I did leave with a plaid skirt and a velvet jacket I'm quite fond of, but the whole experience didn't leave me terribly excited to make the trek back to the Mall of America anytime soon.

This weekend I decided, though, that I'd had enough of staring into my closet every day hoping something new and appealing would somehow magically materialize if I just focused hard enough. I decided it was time to return to the mall. And not just any mall... The Mall. The one where I have to weave in and out of ambling tourists in order to keep up my on-a-mission mall-walking pace. The one that has nearly every store I might possibly want to visit, but where the distance between each one can be a quarter-mile or more. The one where H&M is located.

I was hoping that H&M, with its wide range of styles for work and play, would come to the rescue. I was hoping that, for some reason, I would enter that store and not hate everything. The past few seasons, I've been so frustrated by shopping that I flip through the racks muttering to myself like a crazy person, disgusted by the schizophrenic range of looks from which I'm meant to choose. "Ugh. More gauchos? Aren't we done with these yet?" or "The bo-ho look? Really? Are we still doing that?" My favorite this season's been the prim button-up lace-trimmed tops that seem more suited to Nellie Olson than to today's young and modern urbanites. Is "prairie-chic" really what we've come to now? Have we really exhausted all other possible looks?

This weekend's trip to H&M, unfortunately, didn't do anything more to sell me on its wonders (or to fill out my summer wardrobe). As I rifled through racks of plaid button-up camp shirts, bold floral-printed skirts, and tunics (tunics, and more tunics), I thought perhaps I'd somehow entered a time warp back to 1986. I know everything old is new again, but my seventh-grade first-day-of-school outfit is still not one I want to repeat at age 32. Even the employees seemed wrong on this visit to H&M. The last time I was there, the registers were staffed by model-thin hipsters with angular, heavily-producted haircuts. This time, it was a poofy-banged, slightly doughy, middle-aged woman who rang up my ill-fitting capris (which I bought more out of desperation than anything else). H&M may be a wonderland to some women, but clearly those women get to enter the store through a special portal that I've not been invited to try. Their H&M is the secret forbidden city of glamour; mine is the abandoned meat-packing plant in that final scene of the "Man-hands" episode.


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* I know Maliavale used this subject for a post on her blog a while ago, but likely the main reason I remember that is I had a post by the same title in draft mode for several months already prior to that. I never did finish that post (though it covered basically the same "I hate shopping" topic here), so I'm deciding (since I can't seem to come up with an alternate title) that I can pull it out again without it qualifying as plagiary. OK by you, Malia? :-)