The subtle approach to an interesting wardrobe.
Buying new clothes is good for the morale and bad for the bank
balance. With not much money to spare and clothes a luxury, not a
necessity, Harrods, and Laura Ashley are simply places to window
shop, not actually to buy. Nor, indeed, is anywhere else. So,
wondering how I could have something different, I discovered the
joys of shopping at Oxfam and other second-hand shops. From
Oxfam I once bought two corduroy jackets, one denim waistcoat
and a pair of leather boots, hardly worn, all for £27. I had them
cleaned and no one could tell that they didn’t come from Harrods.
Perhaps they originally did, since many rich women, to make
themselves feel better about being rich, I suppose, gather last year’s
fashions from their wardrobes in the spring and magnanimously take
them to charity shops. (passing through the eye of a needle is
not going to be easy, after all, and men and women of all means
need all the help they can get). Depending on the area some shops
have much better things than others so it is worth going to several.
I sorted through my own clothes and divided them into three
heaps. To keep and alter, to sell, or sadly to put into the dustbin.
Some I kept were really very old, circa 1960s, but still great
favourites. I become very fond of my clothes. I find it as
heart-breaking as saying goodbye to an old friend when I finally
discard a tattered cardigan. I’m a great recycler; I cut up some of the
old dresses and made them into skirts, and some of my long skirts I
altered to three quarter length. I needed the familiarity of my old
clothes while so many other things in my world were changing. As in
Heathcliff’s and Cathy’s alliance, I feel that my clothes are me and I
am them.
I discovered, too, the wonders of the car boot sales. These weekend
diversions have crept over here from America and are in
excellent invention. In my house there is no storage space. All the
clothes I was less fond of, but which still had life left in them, I took
to sell at car boot sales. The local paper tells you where these took
place: it is usually on a Saturday or Sunday in the local school or
college car park. By paying £4 or £5 at the entrance, you park your
car and display, as attractively as possible, the contents of your boot.
I have had many an adventure in the pursuit of people to buy my
old clothes. At a car boot sale combined with a fete in a farm field
outside a twee black-and-white Tudor-cottagey village I met and
talked to many disparate people. I spoke to a gypsy woman who
wove spells. She was 59 but looked 30. (If her youthful appearance
was due to her magic and she had had any business sense, she could
have been rich). Her daughter, she told me, had married the son of
the Squire. I saw the Squire, red-faced, fat, and jovial, shouting
enthusiastically to the home team during a tug-of-war against a
neighbouring village. (I wondered, watching him, what he did with a
gypsy girl in his bed. He didn’t look blessed (?) with sensuality, but I
know you can never tell.
A chatty lady from the local garage took a great fancy to four
pretty velvet pinafore dresses I had for sale. I was selling them
because, sadly, in my middle age I had outgrown them: they were
too small and too young. She rushed off to try them on in the
makeshift outside lavatory. It was built out of straw bales, put up
outside the cowshed. Her return was triumphant. They fitted her and
she bought all four. I was triumphant too. I made £24. A retired
accountant, who was also the church warden, was trying to sell some
rather tired looking plants from the boot of his car, next to me.
Giving up early, he asked me to choose something from my boot, for
his wife. Her size, he thought was something like mine, but then
again, he couldn’t really remember. He had probably been married
for fifty years and between breakfast and lunch he had forgotten her
shape. I selected two items that I was selling for my sister. Her
clothes are definitely superior to mine, so I charged £10 for a tweed
skirt, and £8 for a jacket of Italian origin. He was delighted with
them, and I made over £70 that day.
The less choice I have in choosing anything, the better. So much
time and energy, which I do not wish to waste, goes into choice. My
aim was to establish a uniform for summer and winter, in order to
eliminate the worry and bother of what to wear every day. This plan
has been very satisfactory and I now have three skirts for winter, all
the same style, and two pinafore dresses. I wear the winter clothes
for nine months of the year and should it be warm in the summer I
have an identical wardrobe, in cotton, for this eventuality.
In the same way that I reduced food choices, and found things
much easier, reducing clothes choices has been a great relief and
getting dressed in the morning is now no trouble at all.
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