It astounds me to think back and realise this mammoth event was but two months ago - both because of the transpacific nature of the trip, and its now dream-like quality in my memory. But, in late June, in Shanghai, I spent three hours in a Victoria's Secret.
I can't say this was entirely not of my own volition: Because it wasn't. When, eating on an outside table of the laowai restaurant after class with Katya, Carola, and Mariana, as we often did, Mariana said there was a sale at Victoria's Secret that weekend at the flagship store, I , like the others, agreed enthusiastically with the others. Cute underwear is always fun.
And it was fun! Carola ended up not coming, because she lived in Minhang and it would be at least an hour just to get to the uni where the rest of us lived on campus, let alone the VS, it just wasn't worth it, especially since our final exams were that following week. (Which we probably should have been studying for, but hey! There was a sale!) But Katya's fellow Ukrainian friend Vicki came along with her, and Sinitha and Nuri came with Mariana, so there were five of us in total. Now, Mariana had only just started walking again after her appendix removal surgery (yes, alone in a foreign country in a hospital that had blood on the floor, but that's another story), so she couldn't take the train, and us such, we took a maxi didi (like a (much cheaper) version of uber but for China). It was funny - I was wearing my blue wrap dress and carrying my boxy-see through handbag just with the short handle, and the other girls were also dressed nicely, so in exiting the shiny boxy black van with the tinted windows right outside a massive Victoria's Secret, it felt like we were (Walmart versions of) models.
I say massive Victoria's Secret because it was, in fact, massive. Four storeys kinda massive. I don't know why or how anyone could ever need that much variety in underwear, but it was all there! We walked in and I immediately felt overwhelmed - so many cute things in my field of vision at once. It's also always slightly awkward to go underwear shopping with people you aren't, like, best friends with. But we got over that pretty quickly - Mariana suggested we go down to the basement, the PINK section (the branch of VS targeted at the college-age girl demographic) first, and that's what we did. Almost immediately there was a woman who asked us if we knew what sizes we were, which I do not, considering my boobs seem to be in a sneaky state of growth. Anyway, she asked if I wanted to get measured, and I was like, sure, it'll be kinda fun. But it wasn't very proper - she just measured me over my clothes, and I was wearing a sports bra (for those who don't know, sport bras compress and flatten your boobs a lot), which means my size would come out as smaller than it actually was. But I needn't have worried, because the woman informed me that I am a 34D.
Anyone who has met me in person can tell, even without being pervy, that I am most definitely not a D-cup. C-cup, maybe, on my period. It was hilariously inaccurate - what would she have decided on had I not been wearing a sports bra? Katya, who is virtually flat, was given a C-cup sentencing. I was in disbelief. We thought that, maybe, in Asia, because women tend to have smaller boobs (though it seems like whenever Asian blood meets even a little bit of white blood the girl has massive boobs), their sizing system was adjusted to be a little different. But I went and looked at the 34D bras, and I am definitely not even an Asian version of 34D. So I have absolutely no idea what Jia Jia was thinking.
This information was not particularly useful to me anyway, because I wasn't planning on buying any bras. My boobs keep growing out of whatever I buy, so it's not worth buying nice ones until it settles down a lil. So I first sought out 5 for 100元 underwear, as did Mariana and Nuri. I got mostly boyshort-cut underwear, because I've been fascinated with the concept ever since I saw Bayleigh put them on I was having a sleepover at her house in year 5 (lol Sa), and it would make the short dresses I wear less scandalous, cause it's kind of like I'm wearing shorts underneath, right? (No.)
NB: What the fuck is up with Singaporean girls' obsessions with wearing shorts under skirts, like they're constantly climbing a mountain in windy conditions. My classmates were flabbergasted if they'd find out, somehow, that I wasn't wearing FBT shorts under my pinafore.
Also, boyshort underwear can be pulled up to just be normal high-waisted underwear, which makes your tights stay up. Pro-tip!
Anyway, that happened. I also, on this basement floor, looked through swimwear sale bins. I almost immediately found these very cute velvet pink bikini bottoms, which I am very excited to wear once the weather calls for it. I could not find a matching top, but that's fine. I want to just wear bikini bottom and #freethenip more often, anyway, and the pink velvet ones would definitely match that whole steeze. Also, I realised recently that my poor boobs have never felt the warmth of the sun, and I want to change that. It'll also be nice to not have tan lines.
I was pretty much satisfied at this point, like 45 minutes after our arrival at 2pm. But the others were still deeply engrossed in their rummaging, so I decided to check out the other floors. The ground floor, which we had started on, of course, was Victoria's Secret proper. These things were more grown up, but still pretty - think neon pink longline bras, silky slips, very cut-out bodysuits, and then other bras of various sexiness. It's funny - I think guys think of Victoria's Secret as some sort of kinky lingerie shop (that was what I thought when I was prepubescent), but really it's just family-friendly underwear in pretty colours, and then, in the corners, some very sexy stuff.
There were many more people on this level, which allowed me to take note of the store demographic. It was not mostly foreigners, as I had supposed - it was about half Chinese girls, half foreign girls. Which was very strange to me, given how conservative China had turned out to be - pretty underwear didn't strike me as something Chinese women would approve of. But there were surprisingly numerous instances of twenty-something Chinese girls with their fifty-something mothers, buying bras with diamantés on the straps or some shit.
But I digress. The items on this level were far more expensive than their PINK counterparts, so I avoided looking too hard at anything, in case I wanted to buy something. I proceeded to the second floor, which was more of the same thing, but slightly luxe-ier. Think feather boas, fluffy bras, leather bodysuits. I had a little bit of a gander here, but ultimately, was not so interested. I bumped into Mariana, and together we proceeded to the fourth level of this empire - the showcase section.
This is what I was most excited about. It was less a shop on this floor than a museum - it was playing, instead of music, the audio of some sort of documentary about the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, talking about their most famous Angels. And speaking of which, they had, showcased, a few of the Angel outfits from previous runway shows, complete with the big-ass wings. I think my favourite was just a kinda simple (for an Angel fit) black bodysuit with these massive black feathery wings - I want to have goth angel wings.
I found it! Hi Tyra:
There was one very sulky attendant dressed up very nicely who stalked us around the showcase very suspiciously. Luckily for her, we did not touch anything with our snotty kid-hands.
It was about 3:30 at this point - it had been an hour and a half, and I was more than ready to get out of their. But Mariana had bras to try on, so I followed her back down a floor to were the changing rooms were. There, we bumped into Katya and Vicki (who - side note - was kinda flirting with me the whole time? Could just be a Ukrainian thing), who also needed to use the changing rooms. They started sorting through the things that they could try on, and I was shocked - they all had SO MUCH STUFF. I was so confused - were they really going to buy like thousands of yuan worth of stuff? I didn't say anything, of course, and because I had no bras to try on, I sat waiting for them. They spent a long time in those cubicles, so I observed a lot of waiting room antics. Most notably, a young lady called an employee into her cubicle to help her with the fit. The employee expressed that the whole ass mother of the girl might want to get out, because it would be a bit squeezy. But she stayed in, and so the employee got in too, and it was a struggle to close the door. I don't know how anyone in there dressed or undressed, but I hope they had fun.
There was another employee who asked me as I sat if I was waiting to try something on, and when I replied in the negative, gasped and asked why my Chinese was so good. That was a nice lil ego boost.
Anyway, the answer to my friends' lavish spending came when they all finally exited the changing rooms about half an hour later, with a lot of rejected items. I think - and this may just be a case of "Australian girls are so laid back" (I guess am I Australian?), whereas most girls from, say, Korea, Thailand, Belgium, Ukraine, shop by putting everything that looks cute into their bag to try on, I/we will only try something on if I/we really really like it and want to purchase it. After this we had to wait for the half of the gals to try on their stuff, about half through which I went down to the PINK floor, since all my items were from there, and paid for them. Then, apparently, there was another rigamarole, where the girls had to go round AGAIN because they hadn't realised that the '5 for 100 yuan' sale didn't apply across floors, and had to search for replacements. At this point, Nuri, Sinitha, and I were waiting close to the entrance. I kid you not when I say we were there for half an hour waiting. In fact, Mariana, Nuri, and Sinitha ended up an hour late to their friend's birthday dinner.
And that is how I spent three hours at Victoria's Secret. It didn't feel like three hours, honestly, until the end when i thought I was going to pass out from lack of sustenance. Shop till you drop, indeed. I hope this doesn't come across as "I'm not like other girls"' dialectic - i was very implicit, and very excited to be there. But, if it weren't for my 5 for 100 keepsakes, I don't know that I wouldn't think it was all just a feathered fever dream.
I can't say this was entirely not of my own volition: Because it wasn't. When, eating on an outside table of the laowai restaurant after class with Katya, Carola, and Mariana, as we often did, Mariana said there was a sale at Victoria's Secret that weekend at the flagship store, I , like the others, agreed enthusiastically with the others. Cute underwear is always fun.
And it was fun! Carola ended up not coming, because she lived in Minhang and it would be at least an hour just to get to the uni where the rest of us lived on campus, let alone the VS, it just wasn't worth it, especially since our final exams were that following week. (Which we probably should have been studying for, but hey! There was a sale!) But Katya's fellow Ukrainian friend Vicki came along with her, and Sinitha and Nuri came with Mariana, so there were five of us in total. Now, Mariana had only just started walking again after her appendix removal surgery (yes, alone in a foreign country in a hospital that had blood on the floor, but that's another story), so she couldn't take the train, and us such, we took a maxi didi (like a (much cheaper) version of uber but for China). It was funny - I was wearing my blue wrap dress and carrying my boxy-see through handbag just with the short handle, and the other girls were also dressed nicely, so in exiting the shiny boxy black van with the tinted windows right outside a massive Victoria's Secret, it felt like we were (Walmart versions of) models.
I say massive Victoria's Secret because it was, in fact, massive. Four storeys kinda massive. I don't know why or how anyone could ever need that much variety in underwear, but it was all there! We walked in and I immediately felt overwhelmed - so many cute things in my field of vision at once. It's also always slightly awkward to go underwear shopping with people you aren't, like, best friends with. But we got over that pretty quickly - Mariana suggested we go down to the basement, the PINK section (the branch of VS targeted at the college-age girl demographic) first, and that's what we did. Almost immediately there was a woman who asked us if we knew what sizes we were, which I do not, considering my boobs seem to be in a sneaky state of growth. Anyway, she asked if I wanted to get measured, and I was like, sure, it'll be kinda fun. But it wasn't very proper - she just measured me over my clothes, and I was wearing a sports bra (for those who don't know, sport bras compress and flatten your boobs a lot), which means my size would come out as smaller than it actually was. But I needn't have worried, because the woman informed me that I am a 34D.
Anyone who has met me in person can tell, even without being pervy, that I am most definitely not a D-cup. C-cup, maybe, on my period. It was hilariously inaccurate - what would she have decided on had I not been wearing a sports bra? Katya, who is virtually flat, was given a C-cup sentencing. I was in disbelief. We thought that, maybe, in Asia, because women tend to have smaller boobs (though it seems like whenever Asian blood meets even a little bit of white blood the girl has massive boobs), their sizing system was adjusted to be a little different. But I went and looked at the 34D bras, and I am definitely not even an Asian version of 34D. So I have absolutely no idea what Jia Jia was thinking.
This information was not particularly useful to me anyway, because I wasn't planning on buying any bras. My boobs keep growing out of whatever I buy, so it's not worth buying nice ones until it settles down a lil. So I first sought out 5 for 100元 underwear, as did Mariana and Nuri. I got mostly boyshort-cut underwear, because I've been fascinated with the concept ever since I saw Bayleigh put them on I was having a sleepover at her house in year 5 (lol Sa), and it would make the short dresses I wear less scandalous, cause it's kind of like I'm wearing shorts underneath, right? (No.)
NB: What the fuck is up with Singaporean girls' obsessions with wearing shorts under skirts, like they're constantly climbing a mountain in windy conditions. My classmates were flabbergasted if they'd find out, somehow, that I wasn't wearing FBT shorts under my pinafore.
Also, boyshort underwear can be pulled up to just be normal high-waisted underwear, which makes your tights stay up. Pro-tip!
Anyway, that happened. I also, on this basement floor, looked through swimwear sale bins. I almost immediately found these very cute velvet pink bikini bottoms, which I am very excited to wear once the weather calls for it. I could not find a matching top, but that's fine. I want to just wear bikini bottom and #freethenip more often, anyway, and the pink velvet ones would definitely match that whole steeze. Also, I realised recently that my poor boobs have never felt the warmth of the sun, and I want to change that. It'll also be nice to not have tan lines.
I was pretty much satisfied at this point, like 45 minutes after our arrival at 2pm. But the others were still deeply engrossed in their rummaging, so I decided to check out the other floors. The ground floor, which we had started on, of course, was Victoria's Secret proper. These things were more grown up, but still pretty - think neon pink longline bras, silky slips, very cut-out bodysuits, and then other bras of various sexiness. It's funny - I think guys think of Victoria's Secret as some sort of kinky lingerie shop (that was what I thought when I was prepubescent), but really it's just family-friendly underwear in pretty colours, and then, in the corners, some very sexy stuff.
There were many more people on this level, which allowed me to take note of the store demographic. It was not mostly foreigners, as I had supposed - it was about half Chinese girls, half foreign girls. Which was very strange to me, given how conservative China had turned out to be - pretty underwear didn't strike me as something Chinese women would approve of. But there were surprisingly numerous instances of twenty-something Chinese girls with their fifty-something mothers, buying bras with diamantés on the straps or some shit.
But I digress. The items on this level were far more expensive than their PINK counterparts, so I avoided looking too hard at anything, in case I wanted to buy something. I proceeded to the second floor, which was more of the same thing, but slightly luxe-ier. Think feather boas, fluffy bras, leather bodysuits. I had a little bit of a gander here, but ultimately, was not so interested. I bumped into Mariana, and together we proceeded to the fourth level of this empire - the showcase section.
This is what I was most excited about. It was less a shop on this floor than a museum - it was playing, instead of music, the audio of some sort of documentary about the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, talking about their most famous Angels. And speaking of which, they had, showcased, a few of the Angel outfits from previous runway shows, complete with the big-ass wings. I think my favourite was just a kinda simple (for an Angel fit) black bodysuit with these massive black feathery wings - I want to have goth angel wings.
I found it! Hi Tyra:
 |
| https://www.usmagazine.com/stylish/news/victorias-secret-fashion-show-2016-how-wings-are-made-w452948/ |
There was one very sulky attendant dressed up very nicely who stalked us around the showcase very suspiciously. Luckily for her, we did not touch anything with our snotty kid-hands.
It was about 3:30 at this point - it had been an hour and a half, and I was more than ready to get out of their. But Mariana had bras to try on, so I followed her back down a floor to were the changing rooms were. There, we bumped into Katya and Vicki (who - side note - was kinda flirting with me the whole time? Could just be a Ukrainian thing), who also needed to use the changing rooms. They started sorting through the things that they could try on, and I was shocked - they all had SO MUCH STUFF. I was so confused - were they really going to buy like thousands of yuan worth of stuff? I didn't say anything, of course, and because I had no bras to try on, I sat waiting for them. They spent a long time in those cubicles, so I observed a lot of waiting room antics. Most notably, a young lady called an employee into her cubicle to help her with the fit. The employee expressed that the whole ass mother of the girl might want to get out, because it would be a bit squeezy. But she stayed in, and so the employee got in too, and it was a struggle to close the door. I don't know how anyone in there dressed or undressed, but I hope they had fun.
There was another employee who asked me as I sat if I was waiting to try something on, and when I replied in the negative, gasped and asked why my Chinese was so good. That was a nice lil ego boost.
Anyway, the answer to my friends' lavish spending came when they all finally exited the changing rooms about half an hour later, with a lot of rejected items. I think - and this may just be a case of "Australian girls are so laid back" (I guess am I Australian?), whereas most girls from, say, Korea, Thailand, Belgium, Ukraine, shop by putting everything that looks cute into their bag to try on, I/we will only try something on if I/we really really like it and want to purchase it. After this we had to wait for the half of the gals to try on their stuff, about half through which I went down to the PINK floor, since all my items were from there, and paid for them. Then, apparently, there was another rigamarole, where the girls had to go round AGAIN because they hadn't realised that the '5 for 100 yuan' sale didn't apply across floors, and had to search for replacements. At this point, Nuri, Sinitha, and I were waiting close to the entrance. I kid you not when I say we were there for half an hour waiting. In fact, Mariana, Nuri, and Sinitha ended up an hour late to their friend's birthday dinner.
And that is how I spent three hours at Victoria's Secret. It didn't feel like three hours, honestly, until the end when i thought I was going to pass out from lack of sustenance. Shop till you drop, indeed. I hope this doesn't come across as "I'm not like other girls"' dialectic - i was very implicit, and very excited to be there. But, if it weren't for my 5 for 100 keepsakes, I don't know that I wouldn't think it was all just a feathered fever dream.
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