Welcome back Applebee’s shirt

Product Description

Daylight that mythical Welcome back Applebee’s shirt creature mostly glimpsed out of the office window in the 27 months since Christmas, now stretches into the evenings. On the street, the candy-sweet chime of the ice-cream van harmonises with the lazy hum of Lime bikes. This can mean only one thing. The time has come. You open your wardrobe and reach for a floral dress. It is a rite of spring. Except that every year this precious moment is tarnished, just a little bit, by the voice in your head that insists on snarkily quoting The Devil Wears Prada. You know the line. “Florals? For spring? Groundbreaking,” says fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly, withering a million ditsy prints on the vine without even raising her voice. But you know what? I want to wear a floral print dress when spring springs. So sue me. It is not reinventing the wheel, I get that, but it’s not supposed to be. Florals for spring isn’t about fashion, which is why fashion people are sniffy about them. Florals for spring is a ritual, a marker of time passing, a celebration of having got through another winter. Like taking the umbrella out of your bag and replacing it with a pair of sunglasses, it is as much a statement of hope as of expectation.

Welcome back Applebee’s shirt, hoodie, sweater, longsleeve and ladies t-shirt

Unisex tshirt

Women’s tshirt

Longsleeve tshirt

Sweaters

Hoodies

In the Welcome back Applebee’s shirt Shein EZWear collection, I find a super-short plunging V-neck dress split vertically from the waist to the hem with ruching. Long straps crisscross in a double X on the open back and cinch the waist in the front. The fabric looks like cotton jersey; it’s 91% polyester and 9% elastane (100% plastic). There are five colours available: black and brown – which are both, apparently, “HOT” – bright pink, royal blue and emerald green. The model is Photoshopped into Jessica Rabbit proportions, with a tiny waist, wide hips and enormous breasts, her collarbones jutting out several inches. She is tan and hairless, and she is headless. She poses in front of a bedroom set, crumpled white sheets, ivory macrame pillowcases, and drawings of flowers framed in gold. We see her as she sees herself in the mirror, angled to get a look at her whole outfit. She wears white sneakers, a miniature pink handbag and a gold necklace with a tiny red cherry charm. Below, under “customers also viewed”, a sea of identical headless models in black dresses reads like a Captcha image. Ibegan to fall in love with clothes in 2005, when I was eight. I wanted to wear bright colours and bold patterns that could make people smile or be drawn to my otherwise shy self. I was learning, rapidly, that clothing could do the work of personality. I went shopping with my mom at stores such as the Gap and Banana Republic, but their offerings were stoic and muted. Zara, which opened its first LA store that year, was different: its enormous glass windows were full of trendy, fun pieces and teenage looks I dreamed of wearing. When the Swedish brand H&M opened its first LA store the next year, I was primed for it. Here were the brilliant Zara clothes at child-allowance prices. I could take a $20 bill and come back from the mall beaming with a new outfit. I never thought about why the clothes were so cheap. I just loved that they could be mine.