Substitutions

As you all know by now, I love clothes and shopping. I also love getting a good deal, because value is an important part of the shopping experience. Almost anything in a mainstream store will go on sale if you wait long enough, so long ago I learned to wait. There is some risk that if you wait too long, the size you want will be gone, but in this age of national chains and online stores that complement brick-and-mortar locations, it's fairly small.

But what happens when the item you want doesn't go on sale? What if it's not something available from a large retailer, but rather is an esoteric item, or one that was made in limited numbers? What happens if your size is indeed sold out? There is almost always an alternative, if you're willing to look hard enough, though sometimes the alternative finds you.

J. Crew started selling this shirt online back in the spring. I wanted one immediately, without ever having seen it in person at a store or even in a catalog photo. But $100 is a lot for a casual shirt, especially one that's a little too casual to wear to the office. (For that matter it's a lot to pay for a dress shirt, but if you need to wear dress shirts to work every day, I think that expense can be justified if you buy for quality and durability.)

So I waited. And waited, all spring and summer, but no markdown. J. Crew has gotten stingier with the markdowns over the past few years, mainly because it helps their bottom line. The stuff that ends up going on sale is usually not the stuff I want. There are exceptions, of course, like last year's flannel-lined khakis, but often I end up passing up things I want because I won't pay their asking price, and it looked like that was going to be the case with this shirt. (I've also noticed that some of the stores have cut back on their sale sections, but this seems to vary by location.)

About a month ago I went into a Gap to see what new fall things they were offering. I tend to do this about once a month just to keep up, and also to see what's been marked down. I came across a shirt I'd never seen that was pretty much an exact copy of the J. Crew shirt. (I can't link to it because it's not on the Gap site, but this shirt seems to be the same style only in a different color.) All the key details--the white contrast stitching, the two patch pockets with buttons (the left one really ought to have a pencil slot, huh?), even that little extended tab thing at the neck--were the same.

Stores' collections often mirror one another in a given season to an extent, but I don't think I've ever seen such a blatant copy of one store's item in another store while both stores were concurrently still selling the items. The best part was that the Gap shirt was only $45, and I had a $10 reward card (earned from purchases on a Banana Republic card that I mostly use at Gap and Old Navy these days) to spend.

When I bought the shirt, I happened to be in a shopping area that also had a J. Crew, so I wandered over to do a little comparison. The fabrics are about the same weight and the cut is about the same, but the Gap shirt was a slightly lighter shade of gray, which I found I liked better when I saw them side-by-side. The J. Crew shirt has one quirky detail that isn't apparent from the pictures on the web, nor is it mentioned in the description: hidden buttons under the collar, like some early-90's department-store shirt. It's an odd and incongruous detail that adds nothing to the shirt, and I'm glad Gap didn't copy it.