Refund Policy: One Vogue Writer Is a Compulsive Returner, the Other Keeps Absolutely Everything
It’s final clearance time. If you’re anything like us, that means you’re considering fashion purchases made a little less major by 70 percent off sales. Discounts like that can make a girl go a bit crazy, which brings up the subject of returns. Here, two Vogue editors discuss their wildly divergent habits.
Lynn Yaeger is the compulsive returner . . .
It smacks me in the head like love at first sight. A certain gauzy smock dress, a particular pair of Edwardian earrings, or the perfect bejeweled ballet shoes arise from the trillions of products that bombard us every day and worms its way into my heart. Pretty soon, I am saving its photo on my phone, talking about it to anyone who will listen, and inevitably caving in and fishing out my credit card. I am helpless, hopeless putty in its hands.
But like all shipboard romances, I only see what I want to see. Besotted, I hardly notice that the smock veers perilously close to baby elephant territory; the earrings might be paste; the shoes feel like they pinch.
I am that bane of a store’s existence—a compulsive, habitual, steadfast returner. No sooner is the apple of my acquisitive eye safely in my apartment but the little voice inside me begins to whisper doubts. Just as I was so sure this was the most adorable thing on earth, now for some reason I begin to turn against it. Is it destined to disappoint? Would I rather just have my money back? So off to the store (or in this day of Internet shopping, to UPS) I march, and when it is all over, and the cash is back in my account, I experience an odd feeling of purification, a strange, almost physical relief that I have come to call shopping bulimia.
But wait, the sad story is not over! The minute the item has left my happy home, my affections can swing back—maybe that really was a good dress? I don’t really mind looking a little like a cheerful circus animal! I might wear it a lot! Should I go get it again? (And this is why the Internet is such a blessing—it is deeply embarrassing to slink back to a store with a bright red face and rebuy something you returned the day before, but re-adding to bag? Who will know?)
If you are one of these people who just buys things and wears them straightaway, you might be thinking right about now: “She’s nuts! Lynn’s nuts!” But I suspect you don’t have the same relationship to things that I have. Maybe to you a skirt is just a skirt—but for me, this item sings with promise. In it, I am Sara Murphy in Deauville! I am a Degas dancer, the world’s oldest, chubbiest petit rat in a tutu! I am Isadora Duncan a-twirl in chiffon, albeit with a shorter scarf! When a mere piece of clothing is tasked with this kind of responsibility, is it any wonder it frequently cannot live up to the challenge?
Still, I persevere. I analyze, I rationalize, I temporize. I spend hours in front of the mirror creating different looks, trying to predict what will be a winner. Maybe it would be better if it were smaller? Or bigger? (I once found out that the salesclerks in Barneys joked behind my back that at final markdown time I would buy any size—if too big I would stick a safety pin in it, too small I would leave the zipper open.) In truth, there is simply no rhyme or reason to the science of shopping: Everyone knows that the H&M dress bought on a whim may be worn a thousand times, while that frock you purchased on Avenue Montaigne with the four-figure price tag ends up languishing on The RealReal.
And it isn’t as if I don’t have some striking successes. Eventually, I get sick of myself, snip the tickets off, cast caution to the wind, and just wear the damn thing—and sometimes, I even love or at least like it. Still, if marriage is the triumph of hope over experience, what is shopping but the triumph of dreams over reality? And if reality proves too scary, too brutal—there is always the returns counter.
Nicole Phelps is a little less expert at it . . .
Me? I never return anything. Not the Uniqlo ultra-light down jacket with the security tag still on the collar I purchased a couple of winters ago; not the little-too-tight and way-too-long Re/Done flares I picked up online this spring; not even moldy raspberries from Whole Foods—and my neighborhood Whole Foods is right down the street.
In fact, the last thing I remember returning was a Bonne Bell Lip Smacker that I stole from the local mall in first grade. It was bubblegum flavored and came in a white and pink tube, and, oh, how I hated to let it go, but my mom insisted. She dragged me there, determined to teach me a lesson, and the mortification of fessing up to my misdeed scarred me forever. If only I hadn’t left it on the school bus, if only the bus driver hadn’t hand-delivered it to my door in what she doubtless thought was an act of charity, maybe I’d be better at returns all these decades later.
As it is I’m hopeless. I hear tales of fellow editors buying shoes in three sizes from Net-a-Porter and returning the two that don’t fit, and the mind boggles. As for Lynn’s tendency to buy, return, and then rebuy? I honestly can’t imagine it. The very thought of returning causes so much anxiety it actually stops me from shopping. I’ve spent hours this summer clicking around for a pair of white wide-leg jeans without ever hitting the BUY button—what if I got the size wrong? A $200 MatchesFashion.com gift card languishes by my monitor as I type, and I just came across a Kooples gift card from two Christmases ago while cleaning out an unused purse. It was good for $500, but it’s long been expired.
After I got over my initial nervousness that some nefarious stranger would reach in and pull out my garment bag, a brief stint on Rent the Runway taught me just how easy it is to pack up a few pieces and walk them over to the UPS drop-off a block from my place. The return process was ridiculously simple; I only quit the rental site’s unlimited service because I didn’t like the selection enough to justify the $150 monthly expense. But something keeps me from making the same march down the block with reject purchases. I’m much more likely to ship off my shopping blunders to The RealReal or drag a bag of them over to the Buffalo Exchange on 11th Street and get back just a fraction of what I originally spent. It doesn’t make rational sense, but returning them to the place I bought them feels too much like admitting my mistakes. I blame Bonne Bell.
