Sifting through LCD-illuminated sale sections on the internet for hours at a time can make a person kind of insane, not to mention stir crazy. Every once in a while, to prevent mental breakdown, I have to get out and do some actual touching, feeling, and meandering through real, 3-dimensional stores. You can only stare at a screen for so long before your brain starts to melt, which apparently leads to such things as looking up the entire cast of Salute Your Shorts on imdb and spending excessive time on Tumblr.
Yesterday, for a sanity-check, I ran to my local Target to do some coffee-drinking, aisle-wandering, and fabric-touching. As much as I love shopping online, there’s nothing like touching and trying on clothes to kickstart the “holy crap, I love wearing things” part of your brain.
This time, I fell head over heels for a tiger.
But first, I fell for a floral print that I saw on a handful of items, clustered together on a rack: a white background with dark, inkly branches highlighted by some turquoise and a coral-red flowers. The material was silky, but substantial, and came across as bold but utterly feminine.
The first item I lunged for was this jacket:
Xhilaration Floral Moto Jacket, $32.99
Long sleeves with long zippers are already one of my known weak points, right up there with combining something hyper-feminine with something touch like, I don’t know, a motorcycle jacket.
This jacket is a little funky, though, in terms of its closure. Instead of the classic moto style, where there’s an offset zipper that, when zipped, overlaps one of the lapels, they have a very unique D-ring closure with a belt-like strap that fastens at the shoulder. This is the only method of “zipping up” this jacket, so the lower half is somewhat open. It’s definitely not outerwear, but it is gorgeous. I might just get it to hang on my wall.
Then, I saw this intriguing wrap top with the same beautiful floral fabric:
Xhilaration Floral Wrap Hi Low Top, $19.99
Are you so intrigued? I saw the wrap top portion of this shirt and immediately fell into a daze thinking about how easy and carefree it would look, and how utterly flattering it must be… Then I remembered I have these boobs. On someone with a smaller chest, this kind of wrap is totally elegant, and the attached tank underneath is actually really bearable and not annoying. That being said, if you’re the saucy type, cutting it out probably wouldn’t be too difficult.
Despite my boobs, I tried this one on. I can’t resist that damn print!
It didn’t go great.
It’s partially due to my body shape, but also… this is just a weird shirt! What the hell is that in the back? I didn’t even see that until I got into the dressing room because I was so hypnotized by the pretty. Additionally, the front is elasticized and I hate that for two reasons: 1) it’s the only thing worse than smocking, and 2) it’s too high (waist-level for most people, I’d say) and way too visible. Little scrunched up line at the bottom of the awkward-length voluminous shirt is just not a look I’m going for right now.
After experiencing a little disheartening after the wrap top incident, I was immediately repaired upon seeing and subsequently remembering… the tiger.
Xhilaration Tiger Graphic Tee, $17.99
Rawr. Obviously a little different than the other two pieces, this tiger had my name written all over it. Well… sorta. Okay, not really at all.
Sleeveless tops? Definitely not my thing unless it’s a ribbed tank and I’m at home in my boxers elegant lady pajamas. Additionally, I’m not a “put gigantic animal faces on me” person, and I have little to no specific affinity for tigers (outside of the fact that they’re cats. If this was a house cat, I’d be using pictures of this shirt as a background for this website). Yet… that print.
So I snagged it, tried it on, fell further in love than I’ve ever fallen when it comes to sleeveless t-shirts with tiger faces on them.
Wow, look how much more attracted I am to myself in this shirt. It’s uncanny. (Don’t notice it? You’ll have to take my word for it.)
The entire back of this tee is that stupid, perfect floral print that I can’t get out of my head. The material on the front is thin, but not so thin that my (black, striped) bra shows through. The back is slightly longer, which I love, because nothing ruins a lovely floral like ass-crack or a bad decision tattoo.
I had also grabbed a flouncy skater skirt from the clearance section (I ended up buying it from the clearance section [reason: unknown] for $5!) and wondered how My Tiger would look with some high-waisted, kitty-dissecting skirt action.
Yep, it was perfect. I mean, the tiger has no teeth now but last I checked, tigers didn’t really need teeth so we’re good. As much as I wanted (want) this shirt, I let it go because… I have a severe aversion to buying things at full price and wholly believe in pinching coupon codes off of the internet to save $3.
So I came out of this exquisite experience with a skirt. Nope, didn’t buy the shirt. Also didn’t buy the jacket, and you’re damn right I didn’t buy the wrap top.
The other awesome thing about this line is that its sizing is super accomodating! Every piece shown here is available in sizes XS-XXL.