When I moved to DC, I decided not to bring my car with me because the parking in my building is $275/month and I pretty much Metro/Uber/walk everywhere anyway. When I lived in Arlington, one task I did use my car a lot for was returning things from online orders that didn’t work out. Now that I’m sans car, I’ve been mailing a lot of my returns back. Most of the time it’s free, it just takes a while for the refund to process and hit my credit card. So one Friday night a couple weeks ago, I decided to just hop on the Metro after work and ride out to Tysons Corner mall to do a bunch of returns so they’d hit my card before the statement closed.

(Isn’t adulthood fun?)

Back when I had my car, I typically did returns on a slow Sunday afternoon or after work during the week—it’s been a long time since I’ve hung out at a mall on a Friday night. And let me tell you, the mall is still ~the place to be on a Friday night if you’re in middle school. It brought back memories of when my friends and I would get dropped off at the mall and walk around aimlessly for hours—some things never change!

After I made my returns, I decided to shop around a little bit since I was already there. I popped into LOFT, and one of the first mannequins I saw was wearing this Plaid Flounce Sweatshirt and I knew it had to come home with me.

(As an aside, it’s no secret I’m a big fan of ordering clothes online, but I will say, it’s super nice to be able to take a few sizes and styles of an item in the dressing room and try them on to see what fits best—it’s a lot more streamlined than ordering two sizes, waiting a week for things to ship out to you, only to realize nothing you ordered fits and you need to return them. It really made me think about how I could save a lot of time in the long run if I made the effort to shop in-person more often.)

I picked up the medium, tried it on in the dressing room, and loved it immediately—the material is like a light sweatshirt and the plaid flounce detail makes this so fun and flattering. I’ve already worn it on a causal Friday and out to dinner, and I can’t wait to wear it next week to Thanksgiving. My family’s Thanksgiving is dress code is dressy casual, so this works perfectly. (I know some families choose to dress up!) Added bonus—it’s currently 40% off with the code WORKIT.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, and I’d love to know what y’all are planning on wearing or if there are any other good LOFT finds I should scoop up during this sale!

///

And, while we are on the topic of clothes, I have an exciting update on the work pant front—I think I found my new go-to pants for work! I went in person to LOFT this weekend and tried on basically every pant in the store. The petite skinny ankle pants in the Marisa fit were the winners! (They also come in regular + plus.) The material is high-quality, the legs don’t flare out terribly much at the bottom but are still super professional (the straight ones are also nice, but I opted for the skinny since I liked how the legs were cut!), and they are comfortable enough to wear all day. I bought one pair to start, but if I like them after a few weeks of solid wear to work, I’m going to invest in another black pair and a few patterns. Because I am a crazy person, I still have a few pairs arriving via email I ordered last week—including the Express Columnist pants that were recommended to me by a former coworker, so I’ll report back.

*** SHOP THE POST ***
LOFT Plaid Flounce Sweatshirt
Old Navy Pixie Pant
French Sole Flats—similar Steve Madden Flats
Kendra Scott Rayne Necklace
zeroUV Round Retro Sunglasses

///

Photos by Jenn Rogers