This picture does not do the contents of my latest Universal Standard Mystery Box justice. Hanging these dresses on cheap coat hangers, and not put on a body makes all of them look lifeless. However, they feel great. And one of them I had planned to purchase the next time that their dresses go on sale.
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I stumbled onto the Universal Standard brand a few years ago, and I found that their goods were of higher quality than I was finding in the plus size stores I was shopping in at the time. Two of the three plus size stores are now gone, with their brands absorbed into the "Full Beauty" group. This leaves me with only the Lane Bryant stores and various online merchants such as Ulla Popken where I've made my online purchases over the years. Universal Standard is one of these online stores.
Before Covid, Universal Standard had one store in lower Manhattan. After Covid, they had both trunk sales and on-premises sample sales, from which I have bought many garments. But my favorite deals tended to be the Mystery Boxes, where one garment could be worth the price of the box. In this case, all 3 dresses look like they will be keepers.
With this being said, I am hoping that they will resume sample sales in their new DUMBO location. Yes, getting to DUMBO is much less convenient than getting to the southern part of midtown. But it's worth it to be able to try on clothes and get steep discounts at the same time.
