The Not-So-Long Arm of the (Fashion) Law

So how ridiculous is this?



This is a Splendid t-shirt that I really like -- it's a great tomato-y red and a super-soft knit and I get a lot of wear out of it. A great layering piece. It's also really long, so it tucks in or out without causing a problem, which is good news for Long-Waisted Me. (If I do wear it untucked I have to wear it with very long pants that are hemmed to be worn with heels because I need a little extra length in my legs to offset my midsection and keep from looking like an Oompa-Loompa. Style Spy has a loooooong torso, which becomes even more of an issue with low-ish rise jeans. If you have a long rise yourself, the low rise becomes more problematic -- it's even lower. I now have to be careful about where my jeans hit me because a low-rise jean that doesn't come above my hipbones is extra-risky: turns out that when you diet off your hips, your hip bones are the only things that keep your pants up! Seriously -- one good tug and I'm pantsless. Which is not a good look, unless you're Nan Kempner and you're making a point.)

Anyhoodle (™Plumcake)... Long-waisted I may be, but my arms are a wee bit on the short side (thanks, Mom). And who among us doesn't almost reflexively push up the sleeves of her long-sleeved shirts if we're doing anything more strenuous than lounging ornamentally on a chaise-longue? Well, the arms on this shirt are so long that they have to be rolled up in order to stay out of the way, and they never stay rolled. I hate clothes I have to futz with. Mind you, I'm willing to put in some time on the back end -- I'll stand in front of a mirror and tweak and twist and fiddle and add and subtract for as long as it takes to get it right, but once I'm out the door I really, really don't want to think about it anymore. So today I took matters into my own hands and I chopped these puppies off and hemmed them up to a more reasonable length. This is not to say that I'm not a fan of the Splendid shirt otherwise. I was kind of considering this one:

because it's such a pretty color and I really like that wide scoop neck. But seriously -- look at the sleeves in that photo!! Mind you, this young woman is at least a semi-professional model (I ongoingly find the models from this e-tailer distracting, odd-looking, or just bad. Which is neither here nor there.) which means she's probably taller than average and those sleeves are puddling up at her wrists like she's playing dress-up in her mom's clothes. They do have 3/4 sleeve versions of their t-shirts, which I thought would be better, but still -- look!

Note how the 3/4 sleeves are pushed up. My guess is that if they weren't, they would actually be full-length. Sheesh! Another note: the color of this shirt is "Evergreen." Um, that doesn't look all that green to me. The quality of online color reproduction really grates my cheese, I wish the e-tailers would be more conscientious about this.

However. Check this out:

It's purple! It's ombre! Yowza, that's hitting the Style Spy sweet spots right now. And this shirt has ribbed cuffs that might be snug enough on my arm to stay pushed up. Hmmmmm...