1. Wearing a suit makes people uneasy. Not me, but several people around me.

I was supposed to be in Washington, D.C., this weekend, and I was supposed to wear a suit on Friday while there. But the morning of the flight my kidneys decided they wanted to rattle out a stone … or at least start the process. The last place I want to be when that rock really starts rolling is halfway through a 4-hour nonstop airplane flight, so I postponed the trip. Friday morning I looked at the suit and thought, “Why not?” So I wore it to work.

Now, a newsroom is not a courtroom, or a bank. Journalists dress up if they’re covering funerals, or official courtroom proceedings, but by and large it’s a casual newsroom. And I have pushed the definition of “workplace casual” — I once declared it Track Pants Week and wore a different pair each day, and the similar Ugly Shirt Week selections seared some retinas. So I can understand a little confusion. But generally I try to look nice, so the amount of attention devoted to the suit was a little odd.

Friday’s comments ranged from compliments (”You look nice!”) to quips (”Do you have a court appearance?”). All pleasant. But each included the question: “Why are you wearing a suit?” And several people, apparently afraid to ask me themselves, e-mailed my friend and co-worker to ask *her* why I was wearing it. It is a good way to make people wonder what you’re up to.

2. I probably shouldn’t send you over to someone else who’s recapping “Project Runway” — stay here! stay here! — but this particular recapper is Season 1 winner Jay McCarroll. He’s free of conventions like capital letters and obscenity filters … which makes his posts incredibly entertaining to read, the sort that simultaneously make me laugh and want to volunteer to edit for him.

Samples: “I love the length and the sheer cap sleeves and the sequined chevrons and the waistband with that big obnoxious gathered schmatah that my eye goes right to and cant keep off of for the whole “your challenge was to…and meet the judges schtick” its actually a blessing that heidi had that waistband mishap to distract me because I couldn’t come up with anything clever for the “in fashion, one day you’re in the next day you’re fat” this week.” (And that’s just talking about Heidi Klum’s dress!)

He also has some laugh-out-loud one-offers like “He is just so evanescence and you know he has milk breath” (Kevin) and “i am convinced that victorya is weird and whispery and and and i just have this dirty feeling that she is mean and calculating and its reflected in her weird clothes.”

3. Two weeks ago I had lunch with a friend and while we were in the neighborhood I introduced him to a little shop in the same center. I had hoped to grab a product I’d recently written about in Great Stuff and I knew the store carried the line, since that’s where I’d been introduced to it. “Oh, no,” the saleswoman said. “We’re not going to restock that line. We’re a specialty store, and now you can get it at … Ulta.” The way she pronounced the store name made it sound like it was a street in a downtown crack den neighborhood.

Now, I understand the concept of exclusivity, desirability and image. Neiman Marcus and Wal-Mart do not sell the same items, because they’ve winnowed down very specifically what their customer wants. Now, might their customer be the same person? Of course — just because you have a Gucci bag doesn’t mean you don’t buy toilet paper or batteries.

But in focusing so strongly on its specialty goods, this store begun to lose its luster for me. There are about three dozen scents of reed-wicking air diffusers … that start at $50 and top $100. And $20 tub after $20 tub of scented oils to be used in the air purifiers … which start at $50 and go well into three figures. It is, basically, in both price and preciousness, knocking me out of ever wanting to come back.

I mean, even the aforementioned Neiman Marcus carries Kiehl’s, where you can get a great luxury body cream for less than $20. It knows you’re not always looking to blow hundreds of dollars on a shopping trip … and if you’re happy picking up the $20 things there, you’ll be happy coming back there when your budget is bigger, too.

sammit

WHAT SAM WORE: 1/12/08
The shirt: Long-sleeved white cotton waffle-weave T-shirt (Gap, 2006)
The pants: Track pants by Champion (Costco, 2007)
The shoes: Gel-Oberon running shoes by Asics (Sports Authority, 2007)
The scent: Fou d’Absinthe by L’Artisan Parfumeur (the sample the PR rep mailed me when I first wrote about it)

sammit

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