This Daily Mailarticle was such an interesting (albeit shocking) read, especially when you sit down and digest just how many clothes we buy and worse still, throw away. We often talk about the problem with obesity and people getting bigger what with the ‘buy one get one free’ culture we now live in and rubbish, fattening foods being so cheap which then encourages us to buy more of it. It seems that this now applies to our clothes too. It’s so easy to go out and buy just one more t-shirt or another pair of shoes with the reasoning of ‘well it was only a tenner so I couldn’t not buy them all!’ Primark (or Primarni as I like to call it) hasn’t helped the situation either. I am sure they had to widen the pavement on Oxford Street because of the hazardous amount of shopping bags coming out of that store! Has anyone ever gone in to Primark and bought just one item? Every week people are buying more and more clothes and now it’s starting to have a real impact.
16 years ago my image business was very different, my typical client back then, bought designer or top-end items. However, my mission was to help all women realise that wearing clothes that make you feel good can have a big effect on you and so I decided that I wanted to help ‘Mrs High Street’ with her image. My initial reaction was one of sheer shock horror (not for what you might be thinking!) but for the first thing I noticed was how many clothes a high street shopper owned compared to someone who bought better quality, more expensive items – they bought far less. The next thing that shocked me was how Mrs High Street treated her clothes. There was no respect at all with their clothes all too often piled high on coat hangers and put away stained and damaged. They didn’t value their clothes and as a result, in so many cases they didn’t value themselves.
All of this meant that Mrs High Street craved buying new because her clothes looked and felt like tired rags every time she wore them. Whereas the lady who brought less looked after her clothes. They were stored on the correct hangers and laundered properly so that every time she put on her clothes, they felt and looked like new.
I’m not telling you anything new when I say that the fashion media don’t help either. We are so often lead to believe that if we are not shopping, we are not stylish.
I am here to tell you however that If you are always shopping you will look like everyone else and you could easily be mistaken as a ‘fashion victim’. Style is made up of who that person is past and present – this is what makes up their individual Style. If you want to save not only the planet but your money too, you need to use the clothes you already have and learn how to make fashion work for you so that you can update your Style as and when you need to.
Fashion brands need to educate their customer on how to buy clothes that make them feel fabulous and actually suit them and their body shape. You need to know how to use the clothes that you buy with what you already have, how this new accessory will help modernise that dress that you might have had stored in the back of your wardrobe for years.
In my day the smaller, independent boutiques did this and even the big stores had staff to help. But now we are in a mess in more ways than one and all because a handful of big name brands have simply been selling us more and more and controlling the market. I see sales popping up all the time and most of us are guilty of thinking ‘that’s a bargain so I need it’ and as a result we buy more and more and more and more…
Buy less of everything and enjoy more of what you have. Then we might just have a chance of saving our pennies and the planet.
Stylish wishes,
If you want to learn how to save money, look fabulous and make the most of your clothes, why not take advantage of my Summer offer which is guaranteed to help you save your pennies! But hurry as this offer ends 31st August.
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