Coming out of Nordstrom Rack empty-handed, I headed towards a bigger mall, looking for shoes and clothes for my daughter. It was a rare muggy spring day, and I felt quite lethargy driving on the freeway I5. The mountains on both sides are barren and brownish, without the long-awaited greenness or patches of flowers that should have dominated at this time of the year. When I exited into the familiar mall, the constructions there on the parking lot, with high blocked fences and working craters, narrowed the driving ways, adding to the hustle and bustle of a busy shopping mall. Our city is overdeveloped, and is stretched to its capacity With so many new homes, commercial buildings constructed, the place is no longer what it was ten years ago, giving way to outburst of ballooning population and crowdedness.

 

I finally found a parking spot in front of Nordstrom, an extravagant store that has been on downhill and was rumored to go private or store reduction.

 

Stepping into an air-conditioning and spacious store, where fashionable commodities were gleaming under the lights, I felt refreshed and lifted from my lethargies. There were not a lot of customers on the first floor, neither many on the second.  I strolled from the first to the second, glancing, looking and picking up the clothes from the shelves.  What looks like in trend this year, for women’s apparel, are floral prints with bell sleeves, layered hems, off-the-shoulders, or transparent embroidered blouses. I took pictures, sent them to the Wechat family groups and awaited the feedback. At one time, my husband’s firm “No” dinged through before my daughter said anything. Disappointed, I walked out of the store, empty-handed again. I don’t know if it is my taste that is questionable, or it is really the style itself that is not to our liking. It is a store we shopped and liked before, and it is not the price issue that drove me away, as exclusion and denial came before price checking.