I went to Macys and worked with a personal shopper yesterday. Before you think snotty thoughts about me please note that this is a completely free service. No strings attached free. Basically Macys hopes its personal shoppers are good enough to get you to buy stuff that you normally wouldn't. It is a brilliant scheme if only people actually knew about it. I am not a richer who paid to get pampered. Nope, I am a normal who just called Macys.

I have opinions and vague aspirations at a style but I absolutely never exhibit this style. I think on most days you might look at me and think, hey, look at that schlubby student over there. I just...don't try. And a hoodie, tee and jeans is easy. I also loathe shopping. To the tips of my toes I loathe it. But I'm starting a new job and I have a chance to have a clean slate with people - they don't know how I normally dress so if I suddenly change quite drastically...no one is the wiser. Obviously in my social life I'll get a lot of raised eyebrows - but these people love me as a schlub so they will hopefully continue to love my slightly better appointed self. So how did it go spending time with a personal shopper?

I loathed it at first. Just absolute horror that I had actually followed through with this harebrained idea. We walked around the store with a rack on wheels and looked at clothing. I was invited to give opinions that most of the time were "I don't hate it" or "I do hate it" but very often were never "I just love that". Because I don't shop for clothes nor wear attractive clothing I don't have a very refined sense of what I like. I know what I don't like. For example: this jacket. I do not like this jacket. My personal shopper loved it. Walking around with her felt like...public shame somehow. Look at the shlub shopping! It was all in my head. I knew that then. But in the moment it was not very fun.

Eventually, when we got back to the room, the shopper left me to my own devices for a while (I'm not gonna lie, she was a bit...flighty. She'd disappear for a while and just come back empty handed. Then she'd disappear for much less time and come back with five pieces of clothing. She was an enigma). I got to try on a bunch of pants on my own and formulate what I thought, namely that my body is an asshole who sits super firmly between two sizes. I found 3 pairs that I liked out of about 20. Success. I started to feel like it wasn't all that horrible.

Then the shopper showed up again and we started putting on tops. And tops. And so many tops. Most of the pieces were from one particular brand and eventually the brand consultant came in too. That person doesn't even work for Macys. It became a little circus in the room. A circus of opinions and urging me to broaden my horizons. Skinny jeans? Yeah, alright, they don't look as bad as every other time I've ever put them on. A blazer? Black and white, white, navy, green. All the blazers. They wanted me to buy a blazer so badly but I just could not feel comfortable in one. I get how versatile it is, truly. But I feel like a little girl playing dress up. Maybe some day...

For someone who hates shopping this was like immersion therapy. And for someone who hates shopping I came out of there with enough clothing to not have to shop again for quite some time.

I ended up spending three and a half hours with them and buying a lot of clothes. I'm probably going to return one thing. But I'm about to try to have style guys...so be kind.