Re/Dress is the store I wished for when I was 19 and stopped fitting into the mini-dresses at Contempo Casuals. But at 19 I couldn’t conceive of a store like that—my only option was Lane Bryant. I figured it was my own fault for eating too many cookies, and really, it could have been worse. 

When I was a little, my dad would ferry me off to Phyllis’s House of Style on Christmas Eve to buy my mom presents. Phyllis’s brimmed with pale quilted floral house coats, mumus and highly flammable pantsuits. Clothes were jammed onto racks and nothing looked appealing. I felt bad for my mom and embarrassed. She deserved better than that; she deserved flair and style. She deserved clothes from a store that didn’t smell like mothballs. When Lane Bryant became all the rage, the clothes were markedly better than the selection at Phyllis’s. But they still weren’t great. My dad preferred color, and there was a lot of color in the active wear department. On Christmas morning mom would open box after box of rainbow-hued jogging pants and coordinating hoodies (which we would smuggle out of the house days later to exchange for sensible things like black pants and lilac sweaters). The whole thing was a downer. It was so rare for me to find something truly cool that I thought mom would LOVE, as opposed to something she’d find serviceable, flattering and comfortable. 

When it came to me and my clothes, I didn’t break the size 14 barrier until college. When my hipster plaid pants wouldn’t fit over the freshman 40 tummy, I was in for a whole heap of trouble. I knew I could go to Lane Bryant, but their clothes were pricey and I was broke. So I did what could, and started racking up credit card debt buying some seriously uninspired, dull clothes. Thrifting was depressing and fruitless. Mall shopping was awful (unless there was a Lane Bryant with a good clearance rack). My favorite things didn’t fit anymore and I couldn’t replace them. I was stuck wearing long black polyester skirts with funereal floral patterns. For a long time, it was a dark time. The bad clothes didn’t help my overall miserable self-image. I used to be the goth-lite girl in a turquoise tinfoil skirt, a Cure shirt, a leather jacket, Docs and self-shredded tights. Now I was scurrying around town in black capri pants and giant shapeless cardigans in bold colors like pea-soup green and, erm, black. I was too sad to make an effort. And not making an effort made me sad. 

Stores like Wal-Mart and K-Mart started carrying plus-size clothes when I was in grad school. Now I could buy cheap and boring clothes! Goody! I think sadly back on one particularly awful ankle-length khaki cargo skirt that I wore with low-top Converse (I never lost my love of Converse—they didn’t care if I was a size 10 or 20) and an assortment of hideous and ill-fitting blouses. If I could go back in time, I would destroy that skirt and all other skirts like it. It makes me shudder. Bad skirt. BAD. 

And then as the internets became a magical place of wonder, I discovered Torrid. That was a good day. But still, I was a young professional and I couldn’t always get away with a skull-dotted blazer. But when I could, I did. I bought some amazing dresses and skirts and at long last I started to get my style mojo back. It felt good. And the more I found, the more I wanted. That went on for years. 

Now I’m 35. And I know loads of places online where I can order up a dress or a skirt or a top for any occasion. I can find tights of any color at WeLoveColors and a fancy dress at Igigi. I can also hit up Macy’s or Bloomingdale’s and find a heap of serviceable separates of varying degrees of awesomeness. Sometimes I can find a thing or two at Target. I still wouldn’t want my luggage to get lost on the way to a business trip—but if it’s just me trying to find clothes on a no-pressure schedule, I can do it. 

But still. Re/Dress. If you haven’t heard of it (and you must have heard of it, right?), it’s a brilliant, enormous vintage/resell shop in Brooklyn for women size 14 and up. The first time I stepped in the store I had to stifle myself. I was close to tears. That’s how rare and special it is to have a store like that in the world. I mean, look, I’ve got a closet full of clothes. But walking into Re/Dress. There’s just something that’s pure magic about it. First, the clothes are simply fabulous. You never know what you’ll find. And then, everyone there is fabulous too. It’s like going to a Gossip concert and realizing that for the first time ever, the rock star people are screaming for looks like you! That’s what Re/Dress is like. All the other chicks doing their shopping have this excited look in their eyes. It doesn’t matter if they’re bigger or smaller than me—that’s pretty much irrelevant because once you can’t squeeze yourself into that sheath dress at Banana, your options get smaller and smaller (ironically enough) no matter how close you are to getting the zipper up. When I find something great, I get choked up. It happens every time. And yeah, I’m a girl with a very particular sense of my own (kooky) style. But I don’t think it matters that my tastes are eclectic. What matters is that miraculous, pretty, affordable, sassy, clothes are everywhere. And when you see them there, out in the wild, in a size that fits and flatters and makes my rack look like a background player in Showgirls… it’s so damn exciting. 

This weekend I did something hard. I sorted through the bags of unworn clothes in my closet that I’d purchased over time in smaller sizes. The kind of clothes you think you’ll be able to wear if you just lose 10 more pounds. Wishful thinking clothes. But too much time had passed, and those clothes, while darling, were adorned with dangling tags on the wrists. I packed them all up, and took them over to Re/Dress and gave them a new life while earning myself a store credit. With that I bought two too-short dresses, a kick-ass purple jacket and a grass green tank top that I can wear today. No waiting required. And I shook a little when I tried them on because they fit and they rock and that’s still almost too good to believe.