Color Me Censored!

On the last day of my trip to Spain, I spent the hour-and-a-half of free time to shop on Gran Via with some girlfriends. Seeing as Gran Via is a long, major road with loads of shops, and also that June is sale-month in Spain, it turned into a group of frazzled American tourists frantically grabbing clothes, dashing into dressing rooms, and running to the next store. All things considered, it was a highly successful hour of frenzied shopping. Half an hour in Bershka resulted in a light jacket and three t-shirts. Five minutes in Zara were spent scanning racks, briefly considering a 100-euro pair of gladiators, and leaving with two bottles of perfume. Next in line was a ten-minute choco-cognac-ice-cream break before spending another half hour perusing the market between GV and Puerta del Sol. If you are doing the math, we now have a mere 15 minutes for the rest of Gran Via shopping.

After quickly debating splitting the time between Stratavarious, Topshop and other Spanish boutiques, we decided it would be just as well to spend the whopping 15 minutes in one store enjoying the clothes rather than running into stores with too little time to actually purchase anything. Thus, we entered Mango, a chic three-story establishment in the midst of a deep sale. To my extreme pleasure, one of the first racks I hit had gorgeous high waist pants on clearance in my size. A pair in hand, I was on my way to the dressing room when a friend pointed out a series of fitted Ts. “This is so you!” – the shirts were all art shirts to benefit a humanitarian organization, and between the cool print on the front, the fit, and the quarter-length sleeves I agreed with my friend and took it to the dressing room. I had never spent so little time in a dressing room and had so much success: the pants and shirt fit, and looked good together. At this point we have about seven minutes to get through the checkout line and run back down Gran Via to the hotel before curfiew, and I thought nothing of my purchases except that they fit and looked good.

Well.

My fellow shoppers and I made it back to the hotel in time, and only then did we share a calm moment to show off our new purchases. It was then that I realized the very cool T would never be acceptable at my highschool: the man on the front is “exposed”, shall we say, and wearing it would certainly merit a pink-slip and lots of questions about my taste and judgement. Where does this leave me? With a really awesome shirt and no place to wear it.

Until now!

Readers and Spain-shoppers, I had a complete Eureka moment today and ta-da, here are two school-safe ensembles with the man-shirt. T-shirt Fail, no more!

Thruthfully, I haven’t fully made up my mind whether or not the belt over the graphic works or not, but at least I could get away with wearing my five-euro man-shirt to school!