In a recent YLF forum topic (can’t remember which one), shiny and I were commiserating on the woes of shopping when you are very petite. She is 5’, I’m 5’ 1” so you can’t get much more petite than we are! We started a PM conversation and further commiserated on having to order so much online and then do a lot of store returns, as the supply of petite sizes in stores continues to shrink. We discovered we often visit the same malls, and decided to have a meet-up “in the petites return line”. That meet up happened yesterday.

We met at one of the malls in suburban Boston. We started with lunch at the restaurant inside Nordstrom, where we both ordered the yummy Crab, Mango, Avocado salad, then shiny did a bunch of returns, and we shopped!

During lunch we talked a lot about our careers. I did work for (and shiny still does) various software companies in greater Boston. Although we were/are in different job functions, it was still very much a conversation about familiar things, like which large companies had taken over which smaller ones, which happens all the time in this industry. We didn’t find anyone we knew in common but I bet if we talked more we would. We also talked about our families, living in the city vs the burbs, and how much fun we have with YLF. Turns out shiny is one of the earliest YLF members, having signed up 10 years ago. I’m a relative newbie with just under 3 years.

The shopping was FAB! We have totally different body types so we both played "Angie" for each other (or tried to) when we weren't considering our own wishes. I personally find it brings me out of my own self-criticism to think about what works for someone else's body type - after all we're all different and it's OK. We discussed what colors work best for each of us. Shiny is better in cooler tones and I'm better in warmer ones. We discussed how difficult it is to find gloves made for short fingers, and how so many of the attractive coats in stores now are not really warm enough for our climate unless you are just dashing from a heated apt to a heated garage/car to a heated office.

Try Ons
We both tried on this teddy bear coat (find 1) at Anthropologie and adored the color , but found the sleeves too long in all sizes. No surprise since it's not a petite, and would have been an easy fix if either of us had wanted to keep it. I was surprised at how bulky this coat was NOT, so my opinion of these faux fur coats has changed a bit. The name of the color is "tayberry", which I had to look up, turns out it's a cross between a raspberry and a blackberry, named after a river in Scotland. shiny tried on these lace-up boots (find 2). Close up they look like they are covered with tiny nail heads. Very different and cute. We tried on some other stuff too.

Selfies
We took the de rigueur photo of shoes/bags but completely forgot to take a selfie of our faces or outfits! shiny was wearing her new favorite white booties with a small black cross body, and I was wearing workhorse black Franco Sarto loafers and my new cognac/brown cross body bag. She wore skinny jeans, a deep blue sweater and scarf and a navy Loft pea coat. (Right, shiny?) I was in burgundy jeans, a b/w color block sweater, black assym zip coat and my new floral scarf. Both of us sported fairly short blonde hair and dark red nail polish on very short nails.

What did we bring home?
shiny got a bright red had and gloves (find 3), cashmere, Halogen, found literally as she was walking out the door of Nordstrom to go to her car having given up on the hunt.

I got three items at Macys (all found before our meet-up started), all needing outfit creation and further consideration. BDBgeneration Cardigan (more sparkly than it looks), black coated jeans, and a tunic/dress in grey/black. (finds 4,5,6) The two tops are not petites so work as longer length items on me.

We ended the afternoon by discussing what we’d like to do “next time” and headed our separate ways. I'd say this was a just about perfect meet-up, with plenty of girl talk (including career talk), great food, great companionship. Plus the added benefit of both being very short so sharing tricks and tips on that. Definitely looking forward to doing it again!!!

Photos are shoes/bags, and shiny's new hat/gloves