Impulse buying

by Geraden

Original posting 10.11.2005

You can sometimes get good hosiery bargains at TKMaxx.

I stress sometimes, because at other times there is nothing at all in the hosiery line. Earlier this year they had lots of the discontinued Charnos Light Fantastic, and more recently the very nice Oroblu Magie and Master tights. I have also seen Aristoc, Levante and Jonathan Aston recently.

I can rarely resist popping in just to see what is there. For example I drove down the M6 last weekend and called at TKMaxx in Stafford. There was nothing really new there, but I made the detour worth while by buying up the last pair of Oroblu Magie in my size (colour moka).

Yesterday on my way home I went through the Bull Ring Centre in Birmingham and over the link bridge to Pallasades. TKMaxx is at the far end of the bridge, and I went to have a look. The stock was very similar to what I had seen in Stafford, though there were 3 stands instead of two, one of which carried a mixture of hosiery and lingerie items.

I looked through the packets of tights on display - then I saw a pair of tights that caught my eye. The reason they caught my eye was that they were loose, not in a packet and had some interesting patterning on them that looked like a William Morris design. They were black opaques with patterning in a colour that is hard to describe – a very dark off-gold colour. The tights appeared to be undamaged and seemed a decently large size and suddenly I wanted them!

I could not see any more tights in that design, there was no label in them so …

I asked a nearby assistant if she could tell me what they were. She informed me, in all seriousness, that they were tights! I said with a smile, "Thank you, but that I had just about managed to work that bit out for myself!" – but I wanted to know what make and size they were. Whether a man asking her questions about tights was too much for her, I don't know; but she said she would have to fetch a colleague who knew more about the hosiery stand than she did. So off she went and came back with another assistant who looked a lot more clued up.

The second assistant said that they were Emilio Cavallini and cost £2.99. The stand carried quite a lot of tights by this maker, but none were at all like the ones I had picked up. This assistant was good, though. She asked me if I wanted them, and when I said yes, she hunted around and found an empty Emilio Cavallini packet, folded them up expertly and put them in the packet for me. I asked if she knew what size they were, but before she could reply, I noticed that they were one-size. Well, as my friend Mike said recently – "no problem, you are one size, aren't you, so one-size should fit you."

I have never known one-size tights to fit me, but these did look and feel quite long and stretchy, and I had already said I would have them, and the nice assistant had carefully wrapped them up in a packet, and I did really like them, so I felt I had to have them. So I did.

Talk about impulse buying!

The image to the right shows the pattern of the tights. It has been designed for tiling, so that you can use it as wallpaper on your PC. Have your own tights wallpaper without anyone being any the wiser!

Update 13.11.2005:
I visited TKMaxx at Merry Hill (near Dudley) today and bought 2 more pairs of Oroblu Magie 20 (black and singapour colours) in XL. They were only £1.00 each This means I have Magie tights in 5 colours - those two plus playa, mandel and moka!!

Update 29.08.2006:
I still have not worn the Emilio Cavallini tights that I bought. However today I found this image on the website of http://www.stilnovo.it/. It shows (on the model on the right) the exact pattern of the tights that I bought. Do you think they would make my legs look as good as that? No, please don't answer.

links: technorati