Venus and Online Shopping

Venus is a colorful women’s clothing catalog that caters to a complete range of tastes and sizes. If you are a glamorous young thing who turns heads, or an older somewhat wrinkly gal like me, one can find items to suit most tastes. One of its best features are sizes. The sizes range from XS to 3X. If demand is high there may not be a large size selection so, you may have to wait until the next issue. Rarely when you fall in love with an item, are you disappointed if the size isn’t available.

Pricing is another attractive feature. Most items are priced below $40.00. All prices are in US funds, which means that my Canadian sisters have to add about 30% to their order. Some items, such as coats can be in the high 80s and there is a group of items in the 50s also. But the majority fall below the $40.00 mark, this applies even though there is a sale on. Shipping costs don’t apply on orders of $75.00 or more. Shipping charges for items under $75.00 are not mentioned. I assume they are added at the time of purchase. For Canadians, all border charges are paid by the purchaser

One’s first impression is that the items are grouped together by style. i.e. all coats are in one section or all skirts are grouped together in another, unfortunately it doesn’t quite work that way. It’s not a bad thing because it allows one to piece together complete outfits which have a similar theme such as animal prints or to go with top coats for example. When selecting items one must consider that the models are very young. Maybe 18 to 22. I would be surprised if any of them are over 25. So what looks great on one of these girls may not look so chic on a more mature crossdresser. When selecting, be careful.

For younger crossdressers or trans girls there is a lot of choice of items for club wear, jumpsuits or sexy rompers etc. There is usually a lot of swim wear at this time of the year, but there is not so much this time around. This is a very good time for swimwear in preparation for the upcoming winter travel season. I am sure Covid has been a factor here. The lingerie section is a little sparse also. Warm clothing is a major issue in this edition, tops, skirts, and dresses all seem to lean toward keeping the wearer warm.

I must comment on the range of dress styles. From evening to mini, the styles are extremely interesting and varied. Classy over the knee knit dresses and cocktail dresses in velvet and satin. If one is looking for outfits for parties (unlikely under current conditions) lounging around the home or participating in winter sports you will probably find it in this book.

They have put together some nice outfits with pants and dresses with knee high or thigh high black boots. The pants featured are white but they have many varieties

I have included this story again because it is almost that time of the year. The latest edition of Venus is not the same as the one described here but in terms of everything else things are almost the same. However there are a couple of items I am going to address.

If indeed, one has any concern for the environment we must talk about online shopping.

I know, I know, I am as guilty as the next person. My wife and I have recently bought a number of things online. Clothing of course, but we have also purchased an air conditioner, an ice maker and new seat covers for the car. These seat covers were a problem. We couldn’t find a match So what’s my beef? It is that we are harming the environment. We purchase things like shoes for example. We might not be too sure about the size, which is the comparative size for European or North American, so we buy three pairs, straddling the desired size, in the hope that one of them will fit. The pairs that don’t fit have to go back. That’s twice the amount of effort and resources that we would have used if we had bought them in a mall. In every case, there was a possibility that all the items could have been returned, and a lot of them are. If we had gone to the mall, we could have carefully selected the item, tried it on, checked the quality and gone home with an item we know was most likely OK. If we were looking for something specific, we could have in all probability checked to see if our favourite store, or several other stores had the item.

Or, we could have gone to the mall, walked around, done some window shopping and had lunch in the food court which turned out to be a pleasant morning or afternoon. My point is malls are dying and we won’t miss them until they are gone. They are actually an important social function, which in its way is more important than Facebook or Twitter. Shopping is a pleasure which we may lose.

A good example is Canada’s Hudson Bay Company. It is the oldest incorporated business in North America. The HBC was into mining, oils and furs. They are now just into retailing in shopping malls. The HBC owned most of Canada at one point, until they gave it to the new Canada. Hudson’s Bay is quite close to Britain and their head office was in London England. In the summer. They would sail from the river Thames round the top of Scotland, picking up workers on the way. They formed the North West Mounted Police, (mainly to keep marauding Americans away), which later became the RCMP.

If the company closes it would be a sad day for Canada’s history and our shopping malls.

Tags: fashion, featured, online shopping, style

Category: crossdressing, Transgender Fashion