Socks, boxers... and perhaps a tie!

...or Malta's

One of the things we absolutely love doing is shopping. It's something that helps us let off steam and let's face it, spending gives us an amazing adrenalin rush! Don't you feel the same way? (Well, you should!)

Yet something we always comment about is the lack of choice in the men's departments. Scouring the stores for Christmas gifts last week, though, was the cherry on the cake. We realised we just HAD to blog about it.

Now OK, Malta isn't exactly a shopping mecca. We lack choice and, truth be told, it leaves much to be desired - in ALL departments (yes, women's included.) As a result, most people end up looking like pre-fabricated copies of each other - but more of that in a later post!

The situation with menswear, however, is much worse. Where do men shop from, in Malta? What options do they have? There are very, very few shops catering entirely for men. Then, there are the occasional shops that reserve a crammed, dusty corner for some menswear. It seems that in Malta, we still have the mentality that men don't shop: shopping is a task for the ladies. Think of Zara, for instance. The store is split on two floors. The ground floor is entirely dedicated to womenswear, whereas the first floor struggles to accommodate three departments - menswear, kidswear and the home department. ...And the cash-point in the men's department is always closed, so they have to go to the women's or to the kid's section. New Look, ah that's perhaps the most perfect of examples - the shoes side in the women's section is three times as big as the men's part. (Laugh or cringe!)

Walking in these stores is wacky, especially after you would have had a look at their stuff on their websites. Why is it that there you find a zillion more pieces? So yes, it's the Maltese Merchandise Managers and not the brand itself. And that's beyond annoying. We wonder how many of them are women...women who prolly think Gwida is a fashion guide.   

Wake up Malta! We really need to brush off the cobwebs entwined in the dark corners of our social mentality. It's time that people started living in 2011, we mean, 2012, not 1912!