Shopping

My friend Pri and I had been meaning to go shopping together for a while now, so we finally went this last Saturday. She met me along with two of her other friends in Palermo Soho and took me somewhere in the middle of everything. There is a section of shops that are run by independent designers so they are cheaper than the surrounding ones, which are known for their high prices. One of the first shops we went into was kind of crazy - There were a lot of clothes, a lot of customers, and a lot employees wandering around. They didn't have a desk to purchase your clothes at; instead they had roaming employees that came up to you, asked you if you wanted to try something on, took it off the hanger, left you to find an open fitting room for yourself (um, ok), and then expected you to find one of them somewhere in the store in order to buy the clothing. This seemed a bit backwards to me and quite hectic. Seemed like it would be really easy to steal something in all of the business.
Another shop we went into had several designers sitting with their own batch of clothes. You went up to a rack and asked the individual designer to try on something and then took the piece to a fitting room and then paid the designer directly. This place was also a bit labrynth-like but atleast it had a friendlier atmosphere. One other thing I thought to be odd was the fact that many places carried "unique" items - there would be a skirt or shirt that didn't come in any other sizes sometimes. Some stores seemed to carry hardly anything. I wondered how they stayed open!