As a fashion blogger and self-professed shoppaholic, there are no words that I hate more than the three little: Out of stock. Such a short phrase, but such a big impact. When shopping online, it becomes my worst nightmare when I see something that I like, only to find out that it’s unattainable.
Almost three to four months ago when the very first of spring collections started to drizzle into stores everywhere, I happened to walk by this heather-grey ribbed-knit dress with side slits.
I was refraining from buying anything at all since I had other priorities that I needed to attend to first. At that time, buying the dress would have been an impulsive move and I knew that I would have regretted it that day. Instead, I made the executive decision to forgo the purchase and to come back for it another day.
When I’m unsure about buying something, I live by the steadfast rule that if I continue to think about it for weeks on end after I initially walk away from the purchase, it merits the spend. If I somehow manage to forget about it, or there’s something else that makes its way into my mind, I pass on the want and forget about it.
Ever since I saw this dress for the first time, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I had originally tried it on in store, and loved how perfectly it fit. Tight dresses can often cling to every detail of what’s underneath, but the ribbed texture of this dress prevented it from doing so.
I tried to placate myself by reminding myself that it was a simple enough silhouette that I would easily be able to find elsewhere – which helped me to hold out on the initial purchase. But after browsing around for a couple of months to no avail, I justified that it would be worth it for me to just buy the dress.
I went back to Forever 21’s e-commerce platform, located the dress and went ahead with putting it into my cart – only to encounter the dreaded three words: out of stock. At that point, I interpreted the situation as the universe telling me that it just wasn’t meant to be. No matter how bad I wanted the dress, I just wasn’t supposed to have it. I put it out of my mind, and instead made the design a must-have on my priority list as opposed to that specific dress outright.
Fast forward about another two months later when all of the summer collections have been completely released in full, I found a promotional code and browsed through the whole site to fill up my cart with the appropriate sub-total to score free shipping. Come on, we’ve all done that at least once – bought a couple extra things just to meet the minimum free shipping requirements just because we didn’t want to have to pay extra.
I just so happened to stumble upon this dress all over again, and low and behold, it was back in stock! Imagine my surprise to find something that I’d given up on searching for months ago back within the grasp of my fingers. There was absolutely no hesitation to add this dress into my cart, and luckily enough, it helped me to meet the minimum free-shipping requirements. Talk about everything happening for a reason.
I swear to god that the shopping gods were probably looking out for me months ago and making sure that I didn’t buy this dress at the wrong time. And luckily for me, at least now it’s the right weather for me to be able to wear it out as opposed to stashing it in the back of my closet waiting for warmer times.
And even though it’s just about the dress, it’s situations like this that reminds me that even when things don’t always go your way, it all happens for a reason. Life can’t constantly be perfect and go your way all of the time, because if it does, it’s boring. When the going gets tough, it just means that good things are waiting to happen.
Dress – Forever 21 | Shoes – Adidas | Bag – Dynamite | Hat – New Era
