Man, you're not the only one at all! I hate shopping with the white-hot intensity of 10,000 burning suns.
I will do various and desperate things to avoid having to go shopping for clothing. I don't mind shopping for the groceries, running general errands, buying gifts, or thrift-shopping/flea-marketing, it is buying new clothes that I loathe with a passion.
To start with, I have a very low clothing budget. Bebe is too expensive for me. Take that as a baseline. So, most things available at my price-range are made horribly and are extremely boring. One reason I almost never buy new clothes is because the clothing tends to follow trends, and therefore everything in the store looks kind of the same, and I go sh*t-blind and can't differentiate among all of the different goods on offer. I manage to get bored and disoriented at the same time!
Secondly, the lighting in dressing rooms is appalling, so I always look sallow or jaundiced, so even if the outfit is not hideous and fits reasonably well, I am still going to look like something the cat spat up. So I will take a look at my yellow, disgruntled self and say, "Oh, no, no, no, you are NOT going out in public like that," and will quietly slink out of the dress, hang it back up, and abscond from the dressing room in disgrace.
Most of the time it doesn't even get to that stage, however. With sizing being such a crapshoot, I have to take three sizes of any one garment in to the dressing room (which usually has a sign saying 5 garments or fewer). One that is the size I think I am, one bigger, one smaller. Usually each of them will fit me in one spot and none of the others. I have a long torso, wide shoulders, and a high butt. I'm muscular. I'm not actually that tall, torso notwithstanding, as my legs are kind of short, and VERY bulky and muscular. Since I am oddly proportioned, most commercially available clothing looks like hell on me. Bunchy at the waist, scrunched up in the armpits because my shoulders shoot past the armsceye, gapping over my butt, and too tight in the legs.
Theoretically, and on average, I wear a Misses size 4 in the US, 10 in the UK, Euro 38. My measurements are 33-25-34, with a 19" back waist length and 28" inseam. Since I know my measurements and the oddities of my figure, I find that it is much easier to just go ahead and make my own clothes. Then I can be assured of the fabric I want, in a flattering color, and that the fit will be what it should be. The time it takes to make a pair of pants is about the time it would take to find an acceptable pair.
I should hasten to state that I don't dread shopping in the fabric shop at all, outside of the sad fact that I can and often do go overbudget there.
