Member-only story
Stepping Down From Huge Success
To being seen as a healthy-planet, influencer
My mum was a dressmaker. She had three daughters. I was number two and it was only in my early teens that I got new clothes.
Mine were always second-hand.
My sister, third-hand.
And then my cousins (we were the eldest) stood in line to wear our clothes.
I suppose they eventually wore out, but we lost track of them.
By contrast, my daughter, an only child, always wore new clothes, yet she was jealous of her friends who regularly received clothes passed on from family.
They used to have mannequin parades on the days those boxes arrived. You can imagine it all, girls diving in and out of boxes, squealing in delight when they found things that fit, while my poor daughter was the audience in the proceedings.
Though she laughs about it now, she was hugely jealous of these girls at the time.
She once stated it wasn’t fair, that she had to wear NEW clothes, while her friends had an abundance of second-hand ones.
(I wonder if this still happens, or, given that fashion is now fast, cheap, and tawdry, and not designed to last, are clothes simply tossed?)
