Baring All for a Loehmann’s Steal
There are 19 hooks, 10 brown vinyl-covered benches, endless rows of overhead fluorescent lights and nowhere to hide in the women’s communal dressing rooms at the Loehmann’s Clearance Center.
Sure, some shoppers do what they can to remain invisible, searching for a space that might offer camouflage, creating imaginary walls to cushion their vulnerability.
But most customers understand the Loehmann’s trade-off: In exchange for substantial discounts on clothes, you must strip down to your skivvies in front of total strangers. An uncomfortable situation at best; at worst, reminiscent of embarrassing moments in the junior high locker room.
Modesty, thy name is not Loehmann’s.
Yet for a $12 Adrienne Vittadini dress, it might be worth it.
In the middle of the day at the Fairfax District store, the scene is chaotic. Clothes are tugged on, sloughed off, thrown on a bench. A skirt is pulled on, won’t budge past mid-thigh and is discarded in disgust. Eyes narrow at the mirror, evaluating, deciding. Hems are flipped up, waistbands are pinched, sleeves pushed off-shoulder. Hips are cursed, hands flatten a rounded stomach, push up a bust line. The yes pile, the no pile, the maybe pile.
The click-click of hangers against metal becomes the background drone. It is supplemented by conversation between friends, sisters, mothers and daughters, and strangers that is alternately frivolous, gossipy and intimate.
“What do you think of this?” says a 40-ish woman, turning to her neighbor. She has on a royal blue linen coat dress that she fears might exaggerate her bust.
The question breaks down the imaginary wall.
“I love the color, and I look good in one piece like this,” she says, pulling the dress across her torso, stepping toward the mirror, turning left and right. “How does it look in back? Of course, I have leggings on, maybe I should take them off. Ah, much better.”
A taupe jacket catches her eye. “How much is that?” she asks the customer holding it. She fingers the silk and looks at the price tag. “That’s very pretty. You could wear that with a lot of things.”
A girl, about 6, quietly sits on a bench. Her mother buttons a white denim Guess? dress and wonders aloud if her bra is showing. The woman at the next hook strikes up a conversation with the child, and they eventually discover they were born in the same Brooklyn hospital.
“How about that?” says the woman, smiling. “We’re both from Flatbush.”
A customer with long, thick black hair stands and folds one leg under her. “It’s funny,” she says to her friend, “my right leg is fine, but my left leg still hurts after the surgery.”
“What kind of surgery?” asks a stranger standing nearby.
“Hysterectomy,” she responds matter-of-factly.
“Oh, they wanted to give me one of those,” the stranger says sympathetically.
Not every comment is well-meaning or complimentary; some shoppers don’t even try to hold back catty comments.
A Size 14 with a wide derriere models a busy gold and black cocktail dress that’s ruched all the way up the front. “I don’t know,” she says to the saleswoman, “I think there’s too much yellow against my face.”
A gray-haired woman sitting nearby hears this and says quietly: “It doesn’t do too much for your hips, either.”
Two twentysomethings notice that someone is trying on acid-washed stretch jeans across the room. They lean close, point, whisper and giggle.
“Those are through !” one of them says.
A woman wearing white thong panties and a lacy bra goes through outfit after outfit and throws each one on the floor. Her daughter, about 10 or 11, dutifully picks each one up and puts it back on a hanger.
“This is missing a button,” says the mother, trying on a gray dress. “Tiffany, see if you can find another one, Size 10.”
Tiffany does what she is told, and comes back a few minutes later with a different dress.
“I couldn’t find that one, but I found this,” she says proudly.
“That’s nice,” the mother says, fingering the fabric. “What size is it?” She looks for the tag.
“Tiffany, this is a 15/16 !” she hisses. “This is for someone who weighs 200 pounds ! Nice try.”
Tiffany takes it back and returns to the dressing room, dejected.
“That’s OK,” says her mother, a bit calmer now. “You tried.”
Women slip into different outfits and take on other identities. A tall, elegant creature wearing conservative black pants and a plain black sweater, her auburn hair pulled back into a ponytail, gazes intently into the mirror as she carefully straps on a silver bustier and gauntlet gloves-- over the sweater. She appears to be metamorphosing into a dominatrix.
Another shopper, looking drawn and tired, sheds her diaphanous ankle-length violet dress and pulls on an ivory tube skirt with marabou trim. She is suddenly a ‘40s starlet.
A tall, lanky brunette looks for outfits for an upcoming cruise. She zips up an amethyst satin cocktail dress over a black unitard and is a siren; abandons the purple number for a full-skirted mini with huge flowers and becomes a cartoon character.
After one witnesses about a hundred women trying on clothes, two things become evident: Most women wear dowdy underwear--droopy, stained, shapeless, worn. Beige is the predominant color. (An exception: the woman wearing gold lame flounced bikini panties with a matching bra.) And almost all women over the age of 22 have at least some cellulite.
It is a comforting realization.
At the new Loehmann’s near the Beverly Center there are private dressing rooms in addition to communal ones; either way, a woman still has to face the reality of her body. At least in a communal dressing room, she’s not alone.
This occasional column is staff writer Jeannine Stein’s guide to life in L.A.
