Shopping in Milan

I did it. I bought the outfit I’ve been making fun of since I arrived in Switzerland.

But I guess you could say I turned European gradually.

First, it was the lack of baseball hat. Then the reluctance to wear gym shoes. Followed by the fear of consequences for not dressing my best to shop at the grocery store.

Then my mother-in-law visited me and bought me a Swiss black coat. The key being, black. Over time, the rest of my wardrobe has followed suit, slowly losing its rainbow to coordinate itself with the Swiss way of life—one long funeral procession. About a year later, I had even trained myself to stop smiling all the time.

In November of 2006 my sister visited and I got the next step to the Swiss wardrobe—the black boots. And then I started wearing skirts (black of course) and the black boots together. But when I did wear pants, I refused to do the most Swiss thing of all—tuck them into my boots.

To be fair, my Americanized pants were not really tuckable and therefore it wasn’t much of an option unless I wanted to have legs that looked like a hippos.

But then my sister returned to visit. And we went to Milan. I couldn’t afford much there. But then we found the basement of Nadine. Here was a red tag shopper's dream. (as much as something priced in Euros can be). Hats for 3 Euros. Skirts for 10. Boots for 20. And jeans. Skinny, skinny black jeans, perfectly tapered for tucking. I had to try them on. They were made in Italy.

My sister encouraged me to buy them as I modeled them outside the tiny, overheated Italian dressing room. I tucked them into my boots and pranced around laughing, the Italian salesgirl watching us in the background, wondering what we could possibly be so amused with.

My sister is good at persuasion. She said I looked good in them. And that I was 30, and therefore reaching an age where I might not have much time left to wear something like them. Great. I peeled them off and bought them for “Diciotto Euro”. After all, they were of course, black.