REI Willow Skirt
July 17, 2010
OK, so this is not a dress. It’s a skirt. It’s kind of close, and it’s not like the dress thing will go on forever, so just deal, OK?
This is one hell of a cute skirt, and it would have to be for this over-35-reviewer to give the thumbs up. Really, I am finally becoming familiar with the concept of “age-inappropriate” clothing and believe me, it exists. However, this skirt is thankfully free of anything like that. It’s cute but not limitingly (eh….New Word Time!) so; as in, you can still be thirty-seven and wear this skirt around town without feeling like a junior high student even though the skirt is best described as “cute”. There is a stitched flower detail on the side which admittedly is kind of borderline as far as age range. Call me stodgy but I don’t think grown women should go around with flowers and rainbows stitched onto their clothing unless they are Mariah Carey. No, not even then. But the stitching on the Willow skirt is subtle enough to be forgivable. The skirt’s got four pretty handy pockets, two in front and two in the back, which also lend a bit more styling to the look. You can even actually use the pockets for holding stuff – the front ones are stretchy and fit more than you think they do just from looking at the picture. The length is really nice; just above the knee which, combined with the slight flare of the skirt makes a cute, fun, flattering look while protecting your assets from prying eyes and wayward wind gusts.
Looks, price, ease of use – all thumbs up. Where you are going to run into trouble with this garment is the sizing. I was unable to find the skirt in my regular size on the clearance rack (where I exclusively shop) and REI.com
was out of so I bought a size up because if I tugged it down to my hips I could still wear it. Even so, I do at times get a tad, ah, obsessive about finding the gear that I want, so I kept checking back on the web site. Lo and behold, one day they had one in my regular size! On sale! In a different color than the one I already had. The new color was “gunmetal” and the one I already had was “greystone” otherwise known as “grey” so I thought “gunmetal” would be pretty close, maybe a different shade of grey or black. Well, no, in women’s gear world, “gunmetal” color is purple. Huh.
Anyway, I tried on the new purple skirt right away just to revel in the glee of having a skirt that fit better than the too-big one. However, the purple skirt fit exactly the same! What?? I compared the two, holding them up and matching the seams, and they are EXACTLY the same size. The number shown on the label is not the same, but the skirts are EXACTLY the same. Hmmmm. Off I went to the local REI to take the purple skirt back. I bet you can predict what happens next – yep, I check the sale rack and they have a “greystone” skirt in the correct size! So I grab it and compare it to the too-big one that I happened to be wearing. The smaller skirt was, this time, ever so slightly smaller than the too-big one. So it fit slightly better. It was definitely NOT a full size smaller as the label stated. But, better is better so I did a little fancy wrangling and returned the purple skirt while trading the too-big grey one that I was wearing with the slightly less too big grey one on the rack; which, yes, meant that I had to go take off the skirt I was wearing and hand it back while buying a new one at the same time. This was a return-exchange situation that gave the cashier a bit of an interesting time. But he pulled it off and I’m happy with the skirt I ended up with.
So the lessons here are that REI has a great return/exchange policy, but they have pretty unpredictable sizing and could up their QA/QC component, as this is not the first time I’ve talked about REI brand sizing issues. Skirts should not be leaving the factory with different size labels if they are exactly the same size skirt. We can’t do much about that, admittedly, but we can take from this the important idea that sizing is just a number and that label means nothing. If the garment fits then just buy it. Don’t take that little number on the label personally. It’s not about you. It’s about what fits. In general, I would go for a size down from your usual with this skirt, but be prepared for anything. For all I know they’re just stitching labels on random skirts just to have a laugh.
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