Well I'm back from lovely England and I'm a bit blue missing my hunnie, but I'm armed with heaps of fab memories and interesting cultural and fashion observations! On the fashion front, I didn't get to wear any of my lovely frocks as the weather was too chill - so I had to shop, natch!! Here I am, in front of a traditional English red phone booth in the lovely town of Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire county, sporting a semi-thrifted outfit from a charity shop in the area: the Pepe London jeans (killer expensive new) were seven-pound-fifty (12 Canadian dollars), and the hippie top for 4 pounds (just over $6 CND).
If you cast your mind back to my blog posts from September 2010 when I first went to England, you'll remember that I commented on the general low, mass-market quality of thrift shop clothing there - but that was in a wee town in the north. The charity shops in the southern and quite posh area of Beaconsfield and surrounding area are an entirely different matter: good quality labels, though not a ton of vintage as far as I could tell.
Still, I'm impressed with the calibre of the charity shops in England - the ones I shopped were hyper-clean, immaculately merchandised and well organized - in other words, leagues above the chaotic, stinky and dirty shops here.
The marketing of organizations like the British Heart Foundation, where I picked up the Pepe jeans, are well-thought out - as you see here, an 'urgent appeal' bag, containing a bag for me to put my donation in, accompanied my BHF purchase.
My humble opin is that charity shops in England are run more like corporations (such as Value Village in Canada, which is not a charitable organization but rather part of the Savers corporation in the US). I'm not bashing charity thrift shops here as I rather like their grottiness - but what accounts for the diff between them and their nicer UK counterparts, I wonder?
LOVE that outfit, especially the top! Glad you had a great time in England :-)
ReplyDeleteWelcome home! I loved Pepe jeans back in the 1980's especially as their TV ad featured How Soon Is Now by The Smiths.
ReplyDeleteCharity shops are very varied here in the UK. The chains such as the British Heart Foundation look like normal retail shops and rarely sell vintage but the local individual ones (my favourites) stock everything from make-up, magazines and scraps of fabric. There used to be a real stigma about buying second-hand. It's never bothered me but even today the older working class generation are still very wary about being seen in such establishments. x
Thanks Thrifted Treasure!
ReplyDeleteThanks Vix, I miss England and my hunny already! So the next time I am in the country I need to find the shops you're talking about! We were in Notting Hill the day before I left and there were just too many vintage shops - my mannie would have gone nuts if I let loose. I betcha those ones are more expensive as they were in Portobello Market .... xo
ReplyDeleteSuch an interesting read! I remember thrift/ charity shops as being a dirty, stinky place full of delightful treasures that you have to take to the window to shed some light on what you are looking at! These days here it is all airconditioned and price tagged like a supermarket!
ReplyDeleteAlso insanely jealous you get to shop up a storm in England. Getting there is still on my bucket list :)
Tikkitiboo + Ahka Vintage
Charity shops have changed here in the UK in the last couple of years, I think ... I've definitely noticed a difference in my local ones. Mary Portas (Queen of Shops) ran a TV series not so long ago, making over charity shops to look more like boutiques - and that seems to have been the trigger point for the national charity shop chains like BHF, Oxfam etc to shift from rummage sales to being more like actual shops. Some of the smaller ones are still grotty and jumbled, and they're *way* more fun :)
ReplyDeleteTikkitiboo + Ahka Vintage, thanks for visiting the Grunge Queen! What I shopped in England was only a drop in the bucket, but I'll go back and do more! I still find there are a lot of the stinky kind here in Toronto - but that doesn't bother me at all ... I think I even prefer them for some reason! It feels more like a true treasure hunt!
ReplyDeleteMagpies Laundry - I totally agree that the grotty ones are way more fun!Most of the shops here are still pretty ick, and the for-profit ones like Value Village may be marginally nicer, but they're also more expensive. Thanks for visiting and I hope you are having a nice weather day today for the festival you mentioned on your blog!
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