You will not be surprised to hear that, as the co-founder of a fashion and beauty shopping website, I have always rather enjoyed shopping online, but since my life-changing surgery and its fall-out in terms of both huge weight-gain and physical impairment, I have moved from simply enjoying online shopping to being an absolute devotee.
When going to the shops is either impossible or requires more strategic planning than the D-Day Landings, the alternative, of just sitting at your laptop and scrolling through pictures of whichever garment you are seeking, clicking, selecting your goods and then paying with plastic, is deliciously welcome.
And then there is the fact that you can try on at home exactly when and how it suits you to do so – especially important if your body isn’t working properly. Yes, you may incur a small delivery charge, but that is often waived by online shops if you spend above a certain amount, and measured against the cost of petrol and parking and the aforementioned difficulties of getting around, it seems a small price to pay.
It has been an interesting 18 months fashion-wise, and I’m not talking trends here. Since childhood, I have always had a passion for fashion. I can clearly recall the joy I felt as a child receiving, not a doll or a game, but a dress in chocolate brown and cream, and another in green tweed. I don’t remember toys and dolls, but I clearly recall fabrics, textures and colours of clothes I owned…
And that continued into my adult life, eventually giving me a career in beauty, health and fashion journalism, a successful fashion and beauty book and ultimately my perfect job: fashion editor.
Then, after my surgery, the weirdest thing: no interest whatsoever in clothes. I was content to wear a dressing gown or slouchy (because old) track pants; I had to be persuaded by my younger daughter to buy some harem pants with matching tops (more precisely, she shopped for them for me), which were my daily uniform for the best part of 6 months.
Then, as spring arrived this year, one year on from my surgery, I realised I had begun noticing clothes and trends again, which is when I started online shopping in earnest. But I was buying purely out of practicality and need because the steroid- and cortisol-induced weight-gain meant very little from my pre-op days fitted me.
New swimwear was an absolute essential. I used to be a bikini girl on the grounds that my worst bits were my thighs, which were on view with all swimwear and easily covered by a sarong. My old bikini tops came under so much strain from the expansion of my boobs from B to FF that I am donating them to aeronautical science to see if they can assist in the development of new fabrics for the Space Programme. I bought new one-piece suits last summer as I needed them for my hydro-therapy, but they were a struggle to get into and then out of with my then almost unusable left hand, so I replaced them earlier this summer with tankinis which I find far easier to get on and off and more comfortable to wear to say nothing of much easier to go to the loo!
The moment when I realised I must be on the home straight in terms of my recovery was a few days ago when I was glancing through a Boden catalogue and my eye rested on a pair of point-toe glittery flats. I realised I was really lusting after those shoes as well as a pastel cashmere sweater, a camel coat, and a denim skirt… It will be punishing on the plastic, but I know I must be getting better…
[su_button url=”http://www.sosensational.co.uk/weight-gain-weightwatchers/” background=”#6c20b1″ size=”7″ center=”yes” icon=”icon: arrow-right”]Read Jan’s battle of the bulge[/su_button]
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