Saturday 1 October 2011

IT'S ALL IN THE DETAILS

   I was wondering the other day just how some clothing firms are able to justify extremely high prices for some fashion garments that you can buy on the High Street for so much less.  So the other day |I bought a shirt-blouse with the Tommy Hilfiger label in it at my local Dorothy House charity shop.- I knew the label came from a much loved and expensive US couturier.  I like having a striped red shirt in my wardrobe for winter wear with tweed and plaid trousers and have several red pullovers with v necks to put over.   I had just said a final goodbye to a very favourite red striped poplin shirt that I bought 50 years ago which I wore quite regularly every winter, and I'm wearing it in my Profile Blog portrait from the 70's seen above. The poplin was the very best fine cotton shirting and it had attractive pie-crust frilling at the neck and cuffs - you may remember Princess Di had a very similar one later on.  I had endless compliments on how fresh and jolly it looked and when the frilling edges finally frayed it was a sad day. It cost about £5  which was plenty in the 50's!  and it was from Rowland's classic and country wear shop in Bath.  Here in Bradford on Avon we have their bargain factory outlet shop just by the Station, which is a mecca for many well dressed ladies!
  My new second-hand model from Tommy H. was in a similar quality fine cotton, with slight stretch in it and the detail was very interesting - extra neat button holes,  a fine red piping line round the inner edge of the collar visible at the open neck and a V shaped tab with all the labels stitched on it, an extra embroidered Hilfiger logo elsewhere, short sleeves with proper button-up cuffs, bias-frilled with picot edges, and a rather low-cut neck line with no buttons, ready to show off some great bit of bling!  It only cost £4.50 so it was quite a bargain and I'm wearing it as I write just now.  Plus ca change........

No comments:

Post a Comment