BUY BRITISH ?.

The girls in work are happy a size 14 used to be a 16

 

Nearly all my clothes come from the charity shops. I buy British, for example from the British Heart Foundation shop. Or at least all the charity shops I shop in are in Britain, and coincidentally are British charities.

 

Fantastic! A lot of charity shops smell badly...do you have any special suggestion about how to make the clothes smell nice?

 

Just don't shop in the smelly ones.

 

I would suggest washing them when you get them home in your favourite smelling washing powder/liquid/conditioner ...

 

We could all grow hemp and make our clothes out of that.

 

the dilemma is when you find something you really like and it smells...

 

The charities launder all the clothes they get given, so the smelly shops perhaps are less thorough than the non-smelly shops. Therefore if you only use the non-smelly shops, you wont find smelly things, whereas if you go in the smelly shops, then everything in there smells.

If it smells, don't buy it. There's nowt worse than smelly clothes.

 

C1, I have to agree with J&M here because Sis and I just loved to frequent charity shops when she went to the UK to visit me ... we would do everyone in Newport (IoW) and also Ventnor in two days, buying all sorts ... china, glass, silver, clothes, books ... and believe me some of the best had a rather 'olde worlde' scent about them ...

 

I'm going to be really boring now!

Firstly, we don't 'do' manufacturing in this country any more, it's too expensive because we demand much higher wages, energy prices are sky-high and we as a nation, want cheap, in-fashion this year, throw-away next year clothes (not an M&S 'will last me for years' garment that your Mum would have delighted in)

Secondly, I have a daughter who (until she came to her senses and got a 'proper' job!) was a retail analyst and she will tell you that as far back as 2005 the size of garments slowly began to increase in line with the increasing size of much of the population so, a size 12 for example may well have increased by as much as 1.6" over the years but will still be sold as a size 12.

The third thing is ... competition. On the high street you can try on a size 12 in shop A and it'll be too 'snug', so you go to shop B and find it fits perfectly, (or even better you get into one of their size 10s) - if this happens on a regular basis you blame shop A for 'skimpy sizes' or whatever and from then on make shop B your first choice. Result, shop B gets your money and your recommendation to friends that they shop there too.

And finally - there is always a (very slight) variation between the size of two identical garments. Fabric is laid several layers deep when it's cut out; as the fabric passes through the cutting machine it will inevitably 'slip' against itself causing minor distortions and depending on from where in the pile of fabric your random pieces of garment have come, that distortion can significantly affect the finished size.

Gonna shut up now

 

very interesting, like most of your posts

 

The smelly ones often have the best bargains because they don't charge as much as the posh washed ones. I think the clothes are usually steamed rather than washed which gets the creases out and freshens them up.

As has been pointed out there's few things a good wash won't cure.

 

I see you in a nice little purple number, lots of feathers and a thigh-length slit accentuated with a double row of sequins (yep, I've been peeking ... again!)