Dear Lands’ End
Dear Lands’ End:
Since you’ve decided to eliminate your maternity line, I thought I would update you on the horrors I’ve endured trying to find comfortable, well-made, elegant, and appropriate maternity clothing. I’ve written to you before expressing my dismay that you’d eliminated that line of wonderful garments, but since my struggles to clothe a second pregnancy continue, I thought it only fair to share my experiences with you.
First, your clothing? Superb. The seams stay sewn! The fabric doesn’t pull, wear, shred, or fall apart. The prices are reasonable, and the designs are flattering. It was heaven on a website, shopping in your maternity department.
Sadly, this is not true of other maternity lines. Somehow, it’s become standard to manufacture poorly constructed clothing for pregnant ladies, and mark that clothing up to astronomical prices, so I end up paying $50 for a shirt that I wear about four times before it starts to look like I ought to have paid $5.00 for it.
Monday I went to Destination Maternity, where the service was superb and the employees were beyond wonderful to me, but alas, the clothing was not always as wonderful. I had a very generous and wonderful gift card (Yay gift card! WOO!) that allowed me to have a great deal of fun while I shopped, but shopping in person and trying on clothes and taking them off is tiring when I’m not pregnant. At 5 months along, I was ready for a nap after two shirts and a pair of pants. But since this is my very best and most varied option for clothing, I am forced to shop in person for my maternity clothes instead of at your online store - have I mentioned my despair that you canceled your maternity line? Despair, I tell you - and I have had a very difficult time recently finding clothing that is appropriate for work.
Here, in convenient list form, are my problems with every other line of maternity clothing except yours:
1. Low cut tops. I am not sure why every other maternity clothing designer thinks that my increased cleavage needs to be amply displayed to such a stunning degree. My tops from Lands End (purchased for my first pregnancy two years ago, before you canceled your maternity line - *SOB*) are modest but fashionable. My tops from everywhere else? The words “udderly plunging neckline” come to mind. So do “I can store a Yugo in my cleavage, wanna see?”
2. Dairy Maid Fashions. Every single shirt I’ve tried on at every OTHER maternity clothing store besides yours has featured a dual personality. From the empire waistline up to the collar: Tailored and professional. From the waistline down? Dairy maid. Elastic! Ruching! Drawstrings! From the sternum up I look like a normal professional woman. From the sternum down I look like I need to adorn a bag of Swiss cough drops and yodel alongside a man in leiderhosen. I’m not a dairy maid! How are you the only maternity clothing manufacturer - sorry, FORMER maternity clothing manufacturer - to recognize this fact?
3. Poofy Cotton. I have quite a few shirts from your maternity line - again, sorry, FORMER maternity line. They are cotton oxford cloth or cotton with spandex, and they are comfortable and somewhat formfitting without making me look like a cleavage-displaying attention-hungry ho, or like a giant marshmallow. Every other maternity line? Poofy Cotton. And due to the Dairy Maid Fashions I discussed above, the poofy cotton is not the best choice. Lightweight, thin cotton fabrics are used that end up stiff, wrinkly, and unflattering after one washing - IF I’m allowed to wash them at all! Most often they are dry clean only, which is just preposterous because when you can use your own stomach as a tv-tray and balance a plate of food on it, spills will happen.
4. Cap Sleeves. Does no one offer maternity clothing with real short sleeves? You did, once upon a wonderful time in my life that is now over, and can you see the effort I’m making coming to terms with that fact? I am trying to move through my grief process with dignity but it is not easy. Your sleeves? Normal. Other manufacturers? Cap sleeves. Cap sleeves are Of The Devil for anyone who is blessed with a small amount of arm puffyness. Pregnant ladies? Very often, we are puffy. Ergo Cap Sleeves are the most unflattering type of sleeve for a shirt. I’m not sure of the reasoning - perhaps it’s to allow our big puffy arms to match our big puffy stomachs clad in dairy-maid fashions crafted of poofy cotton? I don’t know. Either way: maternity summer clothing is nothing but cap sleeves.
5. Clingy pants. This one is not your fault, and neither was the light fixture mounted midway down the wall so as to illuminate my legs from a perfect angle as to highlight any and all cellulite. But again, the maternity pants I have from the now-defunct Lands’ End maternity line? Marvelous! Elegant! Comfortable! Flattering! Everything else?! Clings to cellulite, which is just mean because really, a pregnant lady just loses control of a LOT of things on her person, and cellulite is definitely one of them. Thanks to that light fixture, I had an up-close-and-personal encounter with every single bit of my own cellulite, and thanks to the pants that were clinging to my behind like my toddler at snacktime, I saw more than I ever wanted to know about my own tush.
I’m sure that my letter alone isn’t going to bring back your maternity line, and one day I’ll be post-partum and I’ll dip my Lands’ End maternity clothing in bronze and save them in a tasteful shrine to the days when maternity clothing was reasonably priced and high quality, as opposed to poorly made and outrageously expensive. Until then, please know that my shopping, it is so difficult now that your maternity line has gone far, far away.
Next, I will be visiting the post boutique of maternity: Pea in the Pod. I’m sure I’ll leave there wanting to put someone’s Head in the Toilet, but I’ll keep an open mind.
Maternally yours,
Morag
"Another Bottle? No? Ok."
Name: Mórag
Awful Plastic Surgery
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