Rainydaze

Does anyone have any idea where you can get a decent woman's suit? I have an interview coming up and spent several hours today traipsing around a mall but I can't find anything! The shops are full of beachware and casual stuff and I couldn't seem to find just a plain navy, black, grey or pinstripe suit of reasonable quality. Instead I was confronted with kinda jaquard style leaf pattern jackets which were mostly coral in colour

Where's M&S when you need them!

Any help much appreciated. BTW, I'm in Sydney and I'm petite. And I'm an alcoholic as well. No, not the last bit.

Rosscarbery

Oxford? Their women's "business suits" look nice and definitely for the more petite than me!

Gibbo

Sometime ago I suggested trying DFO or Birkenhead Point to someone who asked the same question. They gave me some karma so the suggestion must have been fruitful!

Red_V_Roger

Marks & Sparks online?

NickyC

Saba, David Lawrence, Jigsaw, Trent Nathan etc all do good quality business-type suits. Try David Jones in the city or Chatswood Chase or Westfield Bondi for malls with the best selection.

Rainydaze

Thanks for all the suggestions. I shall be weathering the rain today to try out these suggestions.

Kooky.

Thank you for this thread; I shall be doing same soon. I'm in Sydney and far from petite.

I would second most of the suggestions - esp. David Lawrence (often recommended to me by my girlfriend in Melbourne), maybe also Sportscraft, Country Road, Witchery...and there's a slightly more expensive brand beginning with P that is sold in the department stores, usually near the aforementioned - I've been wracking my brains but I can't think of the name, sorry

E3only

Why is everyone mentioning expensive places

Why not Ron Bennett or something like that. They have a range....? OK not Man to Man tho!

If you want to spend 500-600+ then well you can go to any Mall really...

Kooky.

Erm, we're women?

E3only

My bad

AND - stick to the expensive stuff. (I am married and so experience)

the troubadour

Try Bangkok..have purchased a couple of suites there over the years and well happy with them..also Hong Kong going back a few years also turned out a pretty decent thread.
Sorry for being flippant..but seriously please do keep in mind these places for future reference.
They say Melbourne is best clothes shopping in OZ(
If you can not locate something in Sydney well spare a thought for us who found our selves washed up on the other side....here in Perth you wouldnt ask that question here as there is next to nothing out there worth buying or shop lifting for that matter, when it comes down to clothes

ridds

Also try Cue and Veronika Maine

Rainydaze

Well just to update everyone. I think I fled through the mall in a state of panic yesterday because not being familiar with any of the shops, I lacked the usual mental script (e.g. try M&S, or Dorothy Perkins, or River Island, or TopShop, or TKMaxx or even flipping Primark!). My mind was thinking 'There's nothing here' because the majority of shop windows didn't register anything remotely relevant to my search.

I went back today into every single store just about. That includes David Lawrence, which confusingly for me was in David Jones department store. The problem in the few places with suits was that there was bugger all left. It felt like because it's coming into summer they've stopped stocking 3-piece suits! The retail assistant in David Jones (cannot remember which range/label I was looking at) was OTT helpful, she even rang other branches for me to try and find a jacket in my size, but to no avail. Oh, the 'P' shop mentioned above, I thinks that's Portmans? It did actually have nice suits, just not in petite. The trousers had enough extra length to make leggings for Kylie. Suddenly I was struck with the revelation, "That's why there's so many Alteration/Dressmakers shops in Sydney ...".

In the end, I found a petite range in Myers (achievement 1), with woman's suits (achievement 2) in navy and black (achivement 3). I still had to dive beneath a sea of coral though As I searched, I found myself thinking 'Is the lack of trouser skirts a reflection of women trying to assert their femininity in a macho aussie culture,' which says more for my mental fatique than anything else!

Anyway, my advice is to start looking early if you need a suit, even better, buy up a stash before you come out here! I don't wish to denigrate aussie fashion, but some of the colours/patters/designs on stuff was awful, plus the workmanship/quality of the clothes is definitely not as good as what you'd pay less for back in the UK and also the cost itself is pretty steep for clothes here. In the end, I'd have paid a king's ransom just to get my hands on something suitable, and actually to my mind I did

All part of the immigrant experience I suppose!

hiravi

shopping for shorties is tough in sydney... aside from meyers limited choice, i'm learning to adapt to 'short friendly' styles in regular sizes.