In the Depths of the Dillard’s Outlet

I just bought $756 worth of clothes!

Yes. That would be eleven (count’em, 11) shirts.

And I paid $108 for the lot.

Yesterday morning La Maya suggested we explore the Dillard’s outlet store, in the Metrocenter Ghost Mall on I-17 just south of Peoria Avenue in Phoenix. I haven’t visited those precincts in years. The once-vibrant mall, North America’s largest at the time it was built, died a decade ago. A doughty Trader Joe’s hung on until, four or five years ago, it closed as the chain followed the white flight to the city’s overbuilt, overpriced suburbs. The Macy’s closed long ago. The Broadway died. Penney’s fled. A wan Sears store hangs on, for reasons I can’t fathom—no one ever seems to go in there—and a moribund amusement park runs seasonally. Otherwise, the main attraction is a bus station.

Dillard’s has chosen to convert its Ghost Mall store into a bargain basement, there to unload merchandise that wouldn’t move off the racks in its tonier stores.

I don’t ordinarily do well in such establishments. The lighting is dim, the atmosphere dingy, and the clothing jammed indiscriminately onto rack after rack after depressingly endless rack. It’s hard to separate the good stuff (if there is any) from the junk, and I have little patience with sorting through piles of orphaned, cut-rate clothing. Normally, all I can see is the rayon pink, green, and purple polka-dotted number, which seems to come to hand wherever one reaches.

So without La Maya’s urging, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to go there. In fact, I didn’t even know Dillard’s had an outlet store there. She said she’d found a bunch of sweet designer tops to wear on her recent trip to Hawaii. So…why not?

Hee heee! I’m sure glad I went along!

Pawing through the vast offerings of unsold clothing, we came across piles of upscale designer outfits in every size. We staked out a dressing room and, unimpeded by any nosy staff (as in “please…you want it? take it out the door! pay if you feel in the mood”), the two of us must have dragged forty or fifty tops back there.

About 90 percent of them didn’t fit. I’d guess a lot of the Asian-made clothing we find on the racks doesn’t sell because it’s mis-sized. Most were too large; some were too small. Several sleeveless shirts were cut unevenly, so that the arm-holes were different sizes. And these were fancy labels: Jones New York, Eileen Fisher, and the like. Every stitch was made in China or a third-world country.

Try on enough clothes, though, and sooner or later you’ll find something that fits and doesn’t look hideous.

Everything had already been marked down several times, and now the store was offering 50% off the most recent marked price. So a $7.50 shirt cost $3.25! The most I paid was about $18, and that was for an M.S.S.P. shirt whose original retail price was $128.

Wow!

So I came away with 11 tops ranging upwards of $60 apiece in alleged value, for just a little over a hundred bucks.

Two of them are tunic-length affairs. I’ve been coveting a pair of leggings ever since my favorite J. Jill saleslady suggested they’d be good with some of that store’s costumes. So as soon as I got home, I booted up Amazon.com and ordered a pair of ankle-length Danskins in black, to go with the M.S.S.P. top, and a pair of maroon tights from American Apparel, which should look awesome under the wild-looking Nygård thing with the fantastic Vera-like flower on the front—all very Finnish and politically incorrect in the worst way. Hope they fit—I haven’t worn Danskins since I was in my 20s, when I favored leotards to go with all those bell-bottoms and broom skirts. 😉

So it was a hugely successful shopping trip! We couldn’t have done any better at a thrift shop. And now I have almost a dozen much-needed, brand-new shirts, most of them far more feminine than the usual mannish stuff I pick up at Costco.