There’s now a Stance store in Bayshore! Stance primarily sells fashion sneakers from big brands: Converse, Puma, Onitsuka Tiger, Adidas, Vans, Etnies, Lacoste, that sort of thing. And those sorts of things are hard to find in Ottawa — the big sports stores don’t carry many slim street shoes, just athletic shoes or big chunky hiphop or skate styles. So I picked up a pair of Jack Purcell John Varvatos slip-ons. They’re like Chucks but comfy! And I’ve wanted a pair of Varvatos shoes for a while, so yay, shoes. Mind you, having a good shoe store nearby might not be the best thing for my bank account. Candice and Eyeteeth call me a shoe queen, and they’re probably right, although I don’t buy a lot, I just want them.
Speaking of fashion being hard on my bank account, I’ve been reading a couple of men’s fashion forums — Ask Andy About Clothes and StyleForum — which have got me looking around here for sources of decent dress clothes. I’ve been doing a few things wrong when clothes shopping for the last little while and have ended up pretty discouraged, but now that I’ve started to figure out what I’m doing wrong I’m a bit more optimistic. Basically, the first problem is that I’ve been trying to buy things that I could wear both to work and out and about, which ended up leading me down the path of mediocrity — conservative and boring all around. So now I realize that I need to have separate wardrobes of office clothes and streetwear, and that things I buy only have to succeed at meeting one or the other of those goals. There’ll still be overlap, sure, but I’ll be able to concentrate on finding pieces that are really good at one or the other instead of just passabl