Okay, I know you're all DYING for closure on this, so I'll oblige you
Upon the several recommendations, I headed to Nordstrom today. I found the men's dress shirt department and was cheerily greeted by an attendant. All good. I say that I'm looking to get fit for dress shirts. He disappears and returns with his tape measure. He proceeds to measure my neck, and my sleeve length. "You're a 16 1/2, 32." :| Umm, gee thanks, I kinda new that. That's the easy part. It's the REST of my proportions that re an issue. So I say, what I said here, that shirts that fit my neck are like tents on my body, and shirts that fit my body choke me. THEN we got somewhere. He says, "Oh, so you're looking for, like, a fitted shirt?" Aha, there's the magic word. Apparantly, I'm looking for, like, a fitted shirt.
Huzzah, progress! Sort of, because after I said yes, the next word out of his mouth was, "Well...", the kind of "well" that does not bode well. "The only fitted shirts we carry are Hugo Boss. I'm actually wearing one right now." So he shows me over to the Hugo Boss display. Okay, these were very high quality shirts, that was obvious. But MAN were they boring. I don't need crazy patterns, but geez, some colors other than black, white, blue, lighte blue, ugly yellow would be nice. And then I spot a price tag. Now, I went in willing to pay quite a bit more than my usual cheap ass is willing to...but these were $75. For boring shirts. Umm, no.
Okay, so the salesman gave me another option. I could get any of the other regular cut shirts they carry tapered.....at $13 a shirt. Well gee, their shirts start at $50, so another $13 means over $60 again already, for their cheapest shirt. I hate sounding like such a miser, but I just can't justify spending that much money on 1 freaking shirt!
Just as I was trying to figure out a way to gracefully thank the guy for his time and leave without buying anything, he excused himself to go do something else. So I left. I Felt mildly bad for not buying anything after he helped me...mildly.
But all was not lost. I wandered over to Robinson May, where they are having a sale. Robinson May always has great sales, I've found. Lo and behlod, they had a very good selection of fitted and tapered shirts, and on sale to boot. So I walked out with a two very nice shirts, one green, one purple, both with subtle tone-on-tone stripes. And they FIT! I love 'em. I also got a fitted white shirt, because you always need a good white shirt. Of course, I got it home and realized it needs cufflinks, which I don't have. But I can pick up an inexpensive set of those, no need to be fancy. I walked out with those 3 shirts for what I would have had to spend on
one at Nordstrom. Oh, and I also spotted at Robinsom May a $65 Perry Ellis shirt on a clearance rack that was marked $22, fit me perfectly, and rang up for $16. Score!