Why Claire won't shop at La Senza anymore

A short while ago Claire wanted to buy a new bra so she popped into La Senza, picked up her usual size, a 36C and went to try it on. It turned out to be too small, which she was wasn't surprised by as bra sizes tend to differ from shop to shop. Outside the dressing room 2 sales assistants were chatting, so Claire told her the bra was a bit small, that she usually wears a 36C and thought she'd need a bigger cup size. The assistant took one look at her, fully clothed and declared "there's no way you're a 36C in any shop. You're at least a 36F." Claire said that she'd never needed that size, that she'd been measured before and told she was a 36C and the vast majority of her bras are a 36C and fit her perfectly. But the assistant insisted she must be a 36F, that whoever had measured her before had managed to somehow be 3 cup sizes out and that she could now be measured 'correctly'. Claire said she'd rather not and left.

Now this may not sound that awful written down but the assistant was incredibly rude and patronising when she was talking to Claire. The assistants entire manner seemed to be trying to make Claire feel stupid and almost laughing at her for being so ignorant of her size. And insisting that all the 36C bras Claire owns from various brands must either be way off in size or not fit Claire properly when in fact they're fine.

Claire makes her own clothes, she knows her shape and size well and can measure herself. But she's been measured for a bra before because she deals more with dress sizes and trusts professional bra fitters, who have told her she's a 36C. She owns a lot of bras that are a 36C and fit fine. She's made her own bra before and, shock horror, turned out to be a 36C. And yet this person was insisting that she knew better when all she'd done is taken one look at Claire in a bulky jumper.

Claire is 5 foot nothing tall and pleasantly plump. On a 5 foot frame a 36C will look a lot bigger than on someone who is taller. For instance I'm about 5 foot 8 and have 36FF breasts and if you looked at both of us dressed I think my tits would only look a little bigger than Claire's because we have completely different frames. So it also upset Claire because it seemed like the assistant had made the assumption that because she's slightly overweight she must have a 'plus size' cup size.  (I.e. overweight people only wear plus sizes and 'normal' sized people only wear standard sizes which isn't true either way. And anything over a DD cup size is for fatties)

If Claire was a 36F that would make her basically the same size as me which is just laughable, I wish we were the same size so i could nick her clothes but unfortunately her dresses won't do the  whole way up on me as her full breast measurement is about 8 inches smaller than mine!

It's not that Claire really cares what her bra measurement is, if she really was a 36F she wouldn't care as long as the bra fitted. But you can't tell someone's wearing the wrong bra size by looking at them fully clothed (unless they're wearing something very close fitting and the bra is causing the breasts to look odd, neither of which was true in Claire's case). And it was the patronising, belittling way the assistant spoke to Claire, almost sneering at her.

The right way to handle the situation would be to say something like 'oh bra sizes do tend to differ, you may be a size or 2 bigger than usual in here, I could measure you to see or we could just try some different sizes to see what works on you' which would be polite and a lot more sensible than just saying 'you are wrong and whoever measured you is wrong and you're definately 2 sizes bigger than you think' which is really bad customer service!

And also La Senza do run small! Everyone I know who buys bras from there has to go up from their regular size. At one point I was actually a G in their sizes which I've neer been anywhere else.

I'm not saying I'm never going to shop there myself because I really like their bras (despite them being oddly sized) and swimwear. I find they give my boobs a nice shape and proper uplift. It's nice that they have a lot of really pretty 'fashion' bras that go up to a GG cup size. But it's definately left a sour taste in my mouth and I can absolutely understand why Claire is boycotting it.

What do you think? Would you be upset if you had a similar experience?

Insert Lime based Pun

I know what you're all thinking 'Oh no, Lillian's going to bore us all with another rant about Lime Crime' and yes you're right. And I am truly sorry, I had tried very hard to keep my mouth shut through all her recent shenanigans because I didn't want my blog to be seen in any way as a complete attack on her and because I had more interesting things to write about and didn't want to give her the time of day. But well now she's decided to insult me. So I figured I should respond in kind.

I would also like to point out that while I have repeatedly called her a lying, cheating, sexist, offensive moron, and written posts on all the immoral and shady stuff she has done on my own blog and youtube videos (which I would argue she brought on herself) I have never done anything outright to bring her down. I have not gone around trying to convince Lime Crime supporters to listen to my story, I only posted on her blog once (in response to the person who said I hated Lime Crime because I was fat, my comment was deleted). I've not reported her to any consumer groups or spoken about her/left reviews on makeup forums.
And like I said, even though i have had LOTS of fodder in recent months I've chosen to not discuss them.

But now look what the stupid mare has gone and done:

'QUESTION



I'm not a hater or anything, just curious. Was the duct tape dress rumour true? The TKB thing I don't really care about because it's not like you mark the price up while reselling in cheap bags/whatever, although if I'm honest your prices are high
 
ANSWER



Glad you asked that -- it's about time that misunderstanding was put to rest.


7 years ago (gosh, I'm old!) I sold a beautiful, long velvet dress on eBay. It was vintage from the 1960s and, alas, came hemmed with duct tape. Since removing the tape would mean cutting off the bottom, I chose to preserve its length and list it "as-is". I did make sure to include a clear disclaimer about the item's condition -- I wouldn't want my customer to find duct tape as a surprise. The buyer received the dress & didn't seem to have a problem with it. Had they complained, I would've taken it back without a hinge -- but they didn't. Years later, a *friend* of the buyer's daughter posted on the internet a picture of the dress, trying to unfairly out me as a bad seller. I told that person what's up using strong language. They shouldn't have jumped to conclusions, as I was upfront about the dress from the beginning.


I have never spoken to the actual buyer of the dress. I would hope that if there was a problem with their purchase, they would have come to me and allowed me to take care of it.


Regarding Lime Crime, I have covered this in the past, but just to reiterate: our eyeshadows are custom-blended. We are very concerned with making Lime Crime affordable for every budget, with that in mind we do have sales. In fact, there is one coming up very soon! :)'

Oh just charming! Xenia I am SO sorry that my mother bought a shoddily made dress from you and forced you to call her an asshole, oh what a bitch I am! I particularly love how she puts the word 'friend' in asterisks which seems to imply either a) I did it myself, even though said friend posted on the community using her own livejournal, which she had had for several years (Oh noes, she has seen through my evil plan of pretending to be a girl from Canada for several years beforehand just so I could post mean things about her. Come on Xenia, not everyone loves sockpuppeting as much as you) or b) I have no friends D: Ouch, i'm all hot from my burn.

Her reason for not removing the duct tape is complete bollocks also, but more on that later.

Ok so seeing as Xenia is so keen to put this misunderstanding to rest, here's what really went down.

Many many years ago when I was a mere chuppy sprig of a lass I discovered Xenia on the internet. This was back in the days where she sold Lolita-ish style clothes under the name of Thunderwear. She had a livejournal (where she actually spoke about her life like she was a real person and not some weirdo who lives only to do fashion shoots in her own bedroom and pretend she invented mathmatical theorums before then claiming a few months later to be completely useless at maths) and i liked reading her posts and thought her style (which was a sort of Wednesday Addams meets EGL thing at the time) was cool. She seemed like a sweet girl and, besides her being in a truly appalling band, I saw no reason not to like her.
Over the years though she changed, or at least her internet presence changed, knowing what I now know about her I am not sure at all that she was ever a nice person. On the outside her style changed to basically be a lesser quality rip off of her friend at the time (the amazing designer and now fantastic makeup brand owner) Shrinkle. And at the same time her blog changed. No longer did she talk about her everyday life, boyfriend, Guinea-Pigs (i remember she had one who looked just like mine at the time) instead it became all about the Lime Crime brand, mainly adverts for auctions and so on. I eventually stopped reading her journal properly but still thought of her as a cool person and good fashion designer.
I bought a couple of pieces of her clothing, and while I liked the designs they all had something a bit shabby about them. For instance I bought a top that had decorative serging around the cuffs, hem and neckline and somehow the threads just started falling off (I don't even really know how she did that, I had to unpick some serging i did recently and it took forever!). I also heard some slightly suspect things about her business practices. But again I thought it was no big deal and continued to think of her in a good light, thought it was beginning to dim.

Then my Mum bought a vintage velvet dress from her as a gift to my sister. It arrived and from the outside looked lovely. So my Mum was happy, left Xenia good feedback and packed it away for Christmas. Now maybe my Mum should have examined the dress fully before it was too late for a refund, but you don't expect an item that looks nice on the outside to hold a horrible and ridiculous secret on the inside, do you?
So Christmas came, my sister got her dress and went to try it on. She came down with an odd expression on her face, we asked what's wrong to which she replied 'It's hemmed with gaffer tape!' (gaffer tape = what we call duct tape in England). My Mum looked and was slightly annoyed as she had spent quite a good amount of money on the dress, but we just laughed at it, thinking how completely stupid it was. A hem is so so simple and quick to do. (most sewing machines can do a blind hem, but even if they can't a normal stitched hem can be done in a few minutes, it's just a straight line!).  It wasn't too big a deal, though we obviously said we'd never buy anything from Lime Crime again.

My sister apparently wasn't too keen on the dress as it ended up sitting in our house (Lyd lived in Birmingham at the time) for many years, with it's silver taped bottom, undisturbed until one day some friends of mine came to stay. They had both been fans of Lime Crime a long time ago too and we were all laughing at some of the nonsense she'd said recently or something when I decided to tell them about the duct taped dress. We all had a good laugh and one of my friends asked to take some pictures, I said sure. Said friend then decided to post them in a livejournal community called Meanestbastard.

Meanestbastard was sort of similar to Regretsy, only almost entirely about bad DIY clothing and a bit more meanspirited. Lots of people like Superyana and Shrinkle had been posted about but they all just either laughed or shrugged it off. Xenia however got a lot more coverage presumably because of her ridiculous reactions to petty comments about her clothes looking rubbish. She tried to have the community taken down, tried to get a 13 year old girl suspended from livejournal for breaking her copyright (which is hilarious seeing as recently Xenia has been called out for stealing numerous photos without giving credit), and either her or Mark sockpuppeted constantly with hilarious Xenia-is-a-God style compliments while also insulting Shrinkle as much as possible (something Xenia has also done recently) . However while all that is accurate, a lot of comments are just insulting 'she looks bad here' things, which really brought down the tone of the community to seem like a bunch of bullies, which is a shame as they had some very good points. The community proved that Xenia/Mark use sockpuppets, had admissions from members of Xenia's old fashion community confirming that she encouraged them to shillbid and attack other communities, brought the charity scandal into the light and so on. But some of the comments make it hard to take anything seriously.

However while you can see my friend's post is, while laughing at Xenia for selling a dress so sloppily made, not overly insulting. My friend didn't write anything nasty about her personally, just the dress. But I don't know, maybe the fairly innocent post just laughing at the duct tape hem was just the straw that broke the camel's back and she flipped out.
Xenia was furious and decided that the best way to defend herself was to shift the blame. She said that she hadn't put the gaffer tape on originally, she'd just sold it as is, so people shouldn't be attacking her which is an odd train of thought as she was the one who sold it. But anyway I digress. I forget what else was in her comment but the end was  (I paraphrase as the comment was deleted by the oh so honest and transparent Doe Deere) 'I sold a dress hemmed in duct tape, someone was stupid enough to buy it, who's the real asshole here ;) '

(if you don't believe it really said that then look at the replies to her deleted comment, it's very easy to work out what she said)

Now Xenia has constantly said that the ebay auction for the dress had a clear disclaimer that it came hemmed with the duct tape. My Mum has always maintained that it didn't say it anywhere. However let's assume my Mum was mistaken and it did say it, and Mum knew what she was buying at the time and then forgot (giving my friend and I the wrong end of the stick). Frankly I'm inclined to believe my Mum, but let's just give Xenia the benefit of the doubt.
 It doesn't make the fact that someone who claimed to be an amazing fashion designer either couldn't be bothered or didn't know how to hem a dress any less hilariously. And pretty much perfect for a community dedicated to bad DIY clothing.

So while maybe Mum was wrong and the dress was sold to her with a big, clear disclosure about it being hemmed with duct tape, that's really not the point. I and many other people I know don't actually care too much about the duct tape dress. As I said the reason my Mum never complained was because we all just thought it was stupid and funny, not anything terrible. The problem is her shocking behaviour in response. Calling my Mum an asshole was unforgivable. My Mum and me did nothing remotely wrong. I didn't post the pictures. I didn't say or do anything that could have been remotely harmful to her or her business up until her makeup line launched (and as I said the worst thing I've done is post in my own blog). Not only was the reaction shocking and entirely uncalled for but it said vast amounts about her business practices by insulting someone basically solely for being stupid enough to buy from her.

After that I was obviously furious. I recieved an email from her (more on that later) where she said she was sorry that we didn't like the dress but never apologised for insulting my Mum. I just ignored it. And then more and more horrible secrets about her started to come out. I just didn't want anything to do with her, and didn't say or do anything remotely to do with her right up until my first post on her on the blog about a year ago (despite the awful experience I'd had I was still considering buying her lipsticks, what a moron I am!).

The reason my Mum never spoke to her about it was because she couldn't give a flying fig about her. It was too late for Mum to get a refund and she could easily fix the hem herself so she just shrugged the whole thing off. If she knew that the seller of the shoddy dress she bought had called her an asshole she probably would have just laughed at it, she's that sort of person. However I am not the sort of person who can shrug off someone insulting my lovely Mummy. I am going to hold a grudge forever.

Now the incident happened a long time ago. I've been attacked before for bitterly clinging to the past (though obviously if you've seen even half of the shady crap she's been up to that she hasn't changed and that I don't only have one reason to hate her) but the fact is a while back when she emailed me with a very pathetic apology (she said 'I'm sorry if I offended you in any way' which is an apology but in the loosest possible sense as it sort of implies that I'm somehow pathetic for being offended by her insulting my Mum. I think maybe she's just completely unable to give a real apology and accept any blame whatsoever seeing as the apology I got after the asshole insult was just 'I'm sorry you didn't like the dress' not 'Im sorry I sold that dress' or 'Im sorry i insulted your Mum' ) I was ready to forgive her. I was very happy to finally have any sort of apology. But then someone contacted me to say that, while Xenia had been sweetness and light to me with her apology and email, behind my back she had said that the whole incident had never happened, so basically calling me a liar while lying through her teeth herself.

And now it's been brought up again by her and she's trying to suggest my friend (or me because her implication that it was really me, not my friend is pretty obvious) is the one in the wrong because she dared to suggest hemming a dress with duct tape was bad DIY.
So I think I have the right to be angry about the whole thing!

So yes, I'm angry. And because of that I'm going to do something I said I wouldn't do. I mentioned earlier (and have mentioned a few other times) that just after she'd called my Mum an asshole she sent me an email. I have refrained from posting it up until now because it is so incredibly moronic and I'd rather have just let her shoot herself in the foot. However because I am so mad I want everyone to see how she managed to not only miss the entire point (apologising that we didn't like the dress when I was angry at her insulting my Mum), insult her 'fans' ('butter knife suicide? nice one Xenia) and turn the whole thing into a pity party for herself.
Also I think it's important and it proves she lied in her formspring. In it she says she purposefully left it hemmed with the duct tape to 'preserve the length', in the email she gives a completely different reason.

It may be a bit bitchy to post this, but frankly I don't care. She's insulted me and my friends and family too many times for me to care about respecting her privacy.
 
'Hi. I figured I'd email you directly instead of commenting in your journal.

First of all, I am sorry you didn't like the dress. Heck knows why I didn't fix it up. Maybe my sewing machine was broken that week, or maybe I just didn't know how to do it at the time. Or maybe I was just broke and desperate to sell it in as-is condition. I really can't remember.


LJ is a wonderful place. Reading other people's thoughts entertains me immensely. But then there are these people always looking to say something nasty and then act deeply offended at my punchy comeback. And yes, I understand everyone has the right to bitch on the internet and blah blah blah but come on. It got to the point where I am not allowed to even be a *real person* any more without someone getting on my case. I'm not allowed to make mistakes without getting scorned by a stranger. I'm not allowed to look ugly without someone snapping a picture and posting it for everyone to laugh at. I'm not allowed to be in a bad mood and make a sarcastic remark. All I can do to stay out of trouble is to be is this perfect, bubbly girl with lime green eyeshadow and hot pink mini skirt. I just can't do it any more. I'm done with the limelight, (pun intended!).


I stopped selling on eBay 6 months ago. I don't really do fashion nor music either. I quit both in favor of a steady-paying job a few months ago. I'm getting rid of all my sewing stuff. You're probably wondering why I still haven't 'announced' it yet. Well, frankly, I can't think of a way to do it without coming off like an asshole once again. Imagine hundreds of emails from girls all saying how much you've inspired them 'to be themselves and to follow their dreams' and then bam, "Listen up kiddies, it's all a bunch of horse puckey and you'll be broke for the rest of your life, so forget it and conform now before it's too late." I don't think I'm special. In fact, I think what happened to me is very typical. But oh, the pressure! You know someone is gonna call me a traitor and a hypocrite and commit butter knife suicide because I no longer reconstruct t-shirts. lol

Or should I tell them the truth? How much of the truth? Should I tell them that if they think any of the top eBay designers make any real money, they're crazy? They all act upbeat and pretend to be successful because no one will buy from them otherwise. And the money you make slaving away 18 hours a day? You'd be better off working $10 an hour at a convenience store! It's freakin' depressing. As in, I was actually diagnosed with depression last year and am taking pills for it. O__O

Anyway, I'm not sure why I'm telling you all this. I guess I feel like there must be someone who will understand. I am a nice person (seriously). I try to do as much good as I can, and when someone undeservingly attacks me over something I did or didn't do 3 years ago, it breaks my heart. I hate being in a public eye, that's why I left entertainment. There is a lot of pressure to be this and that, and to be nice and to smile when all you want to do is punch walls and die.

Sorry about this lengthy email. Don't worry, I don't expect you to fall in love with me all of a sudden or anything. In fact, you can still hate me if you choose - I'm used to it. :) '

And i do choose to still hate her! While some of the things she said wrote (if true) would be very sad, such as her having depression (I suffer from it and wouldn't wish it on everyone, not even her) there was no reason to bring it up. Talking about those things was just an obvious tactic to gain sympathy, without her actually having to do something crazy like apologise for her behaviour. And depression is not an excuse to do something horrible to another person.

And again it's everyone elses fault, not hers (I'm on pills because of you!). While I agree that some of the things said about her in the meanestbastard community were cruel my friends post was really not. And my Mother did nothing wrong, so lashing out at her was completely unnessecary. Mum didn't laugh at photos of her stupid makeup, Mum didn't do ANYTHING nasty to her. She says 'But then there are these people always looking to say something nasty and then act deeply offended at my punchy comeback' But my friend didn't really say anything too nasty, just 'this is a bit rubbish' basically and Mum did absolutely nothing wrong, so why shouldn't I be deeply offended by her nasty, bitchy, completely uncalled for comeback?

'I'm not allowed to be in a bad mood and make a sarcastic remark' well not when you insult an innocent person you're not!

Also: 'I try to do as much good as I can, and when someone undeservingly attacks me over something I did or didn't do 3 years ago, it breaks my heart' a) you DID do it, you sold the dress. b) it was not undeserved, it was bad DIY, the post was made on a community about bad DIY, simples. c) That isn't an excuse to call someone who bought a dress from you in good faith an asshole.

And her saying that she hates being in the public eye is just laughable.

In a way I am sort of thankful for Xenia calling my Mum an asshole. Before it happened I may have laughed at some of the more amusing things she said and did but I wouldn't have found about what a gooddamn lousy excuse for a human being she really is. I would undoubtably have bought into her candyfuture nonsense and possibly bought her crappy repackaged eyeshadows and awful formulated lipsticks. Also while personally I have a bias to feeling that calling my Mum an asshole is the worst thing she could do it isn't. In the huge list of horrible things she has done calling Mum a nasty name is pretty low down.

This woman has lied again and again to her customers, has repackaged her eyeshadows then blamed tkb for copying them. (confirmed by Audrey Kitching who worked with her),  has tried to assasinate her competition repeatedly, has threatened to sue someone for a bad review then when the review was deleted and replaced with a nicely written apology claimed that wasn't good enough and made her put up a new retraction written by Lime Crime, has asked bloggers to delete negative comments, has given out a bloggers personal email in a newsletter and asked her fans to send emails   disagreeing with her fair review, has then claimed said reviewer was not objective, posted horribly sexist remarks, admitted to stealing a jacket, blatantly shillbidded (and according to people in her old community used to encourage them to shillbid) and kicked people out of her old community for not being power hungry enough while talking about them behind their back and has (almost certainly) STOLEN FROM CHARITY (sadly links have been deleted over the years. Ask if you want the full story, but you might not believe me). Her history would be hilarious if it were fiction but sadly it is not.

She is a nasty piece of work. But I had tried to be the bigger person and stop writing about her.

And then she had to bring it up herself but make things sound like she was in the wrong and again just the victim of nasty bullying.

The hilarious thing is I basically predicted all this back in 2007 replying to her insulting Mum:
'If you reply to this i'm simply going to ignore it because i know you wouldn't do anything as crazy as offer an apology for your behaviour, you'd probably attempt to shift the blame back to me for having the nerve to stand up for myself when being insulted.'

To quote someone on the examiner article: 'calling somebody's mother a hideous name for buying something in good faith is not "telling them what's up, with strong language!" it's being an odious little reptile with no sense of how to act.'

What a complete cunt.

Trouble with Eyeko

http://eyeko.com/

Eyeko is a fun, drugstore-priced Uk based brand. I only own a few of their products, 3 colours of their new Nail polish collection: 'Cosmic' a black with multi coloured glitter, 'lilac' a lilac colour (shockingly :P) and 'vintage' a pale green with a hint of blue. I really like these polishes, the colours are lovely, they apply nicely and last well. My Mum uses their Eyeko Cream which is a moisturiser, eye cream and highlighter in one and loves it. I bough the nail varnishes through Asos.com when they were on sale. As i was happy with my polishes i decided to try a couple of their other products. I found out that the official Eyeko website nearly constantly has special offers or discounts on so i decided to buy from them  directly. I bought a set of 3 Line and Shine eyeliners which were (and still are) on 3 for 2 which was £8 and a nail polish from their old collection, Pastel polish (a pale blue) for £3. At the time there was a special offer on, 10% off if you spend over £10 plus a special surprise free gift. So i ended up getting everything for about £9, which i was happy with. There was also free shipping.

However i had huge problems getting my order. I paid via paypal immediately and got a receipt, but never got a notice to tell me my order had been shipped. The shipping was meant to take about 3 working days.
After two weeks i still had not seen head nor tail of my order. As i work from home there was no way i had missed the postman so i sent Eyeko a very polite and friendly email to tell them my order hadn't arrived and asked them when they had sent it.
After over a week i still hadn't recieved a reply so i wrote another, much more grumpy email about it, saying i was very unhappy and probably would not shop from them again and would have to make a claim via paypal if they did not reply.
This time i recieved a reply the next day, which just told me to wait until the next monday and if the order still had not arrived they would look into it. This slightly irritated me as by that time i had waited 3 weeks for my order. So on the monday when there was still no sign of my order i emailed again. After a few days the guy i had been discussing it with told me he would reship my order but again i recieved no notice to tell me it had been shipped. I waited another 2 weeks and there was still no sign of the order. It had now been almost a month and a half since i made my order. So i sent another email and as i didn't get a reply for a few days i started a paypal claim. I got a reply the following day asking if i would like them to resend my order again or just refund my money. I asked for a refund and recieved it a few days later, nearly 2 months after i first made my order.

The problem i had was not so much with the fact that my order never arrived but with the customer service i recieved. I did end up getting a refund on my money, but i did not like having to jump through hoops or have to threaten them with paypal claims before getting a reply. The fact they never replied to my first email really soured the experience, though they were polite in their replies.

As i said before i really like the products from them i tried, their prices are fair and i'm sure it was just a one off problem with my order, but i was really not happy with how my problem was dealt with, so i won't be repurchasing directly from Eyeko again, though i may try the products if i find them on another website or instore.