STOPSHOP 4: Are earrings clothes and other philosophical questions....

Freed from the demands of shopping, StopShop has become a reflective, contemplative creature - like Bertrand Russell but in higher heels. Vexing questions fill my thoughts. Why did I give up shopping? What will happen when I start shopping again? (Not that I'm counting but that's less than 50 weeks away) What else is there on the Internet other than shopping? I day dream loopholes in my self-imposed fashion famine. Oh I know. I'm only cheating myself - but who else would I want to cheat? If I devoted as much attention to the loopholes in the small print of my credit card bills, I'd be rich enough to buy those bigger wardrobes. 
So, conundrum number one: in the last week or so I have had three fashion A&E cases: mostly washing related casualties. Non StopShop me would bow to the forces of fashion entropy and look forward to replacing them. But StopShop? Surely she is made of thriftier stuff?
First to require resuscitation were my Houlihan Stealth jeans. Very proud of these I was. Limited edition. Bought in NY in an inaccurate but pleasingly small size, thanks to vanity sizing and added lycra. This combination has meant I have been wearing them as much as possible - chiefly because they are so small I'm terrified that if I put them away for a few weeks I won't be able to get them above my knees. Then with the tentative first wash, disaster struck. I stuck to the letter of the washing instructions, honest I did. I even switched the machine to its most delicate cycle,  as gentle as a mother cat cleaning her kittens. Yet despite all this, pre-wash they had a sexy sheen like leather; post wash they are the colour and texture of the contents of a Hoover bag.  

Before (point of clarification: NOT modelled by me....):

Next up was a white Vivienne Westwood shirt, accidentally stuffed into the machine along with the usual industrial quantities of white laundry. Curse that blue bandanna!
Even more heartbreaking was the large four inch rent I noticed in the back of my best coat. I love this coat. It was a lot of money (in a sale, naturellement, mes cheries) but I justified it as an heirloom, to be handed it down on my deathbed to my weeping daughter ("Here's a moth eaten old coat, darling, that Mummy's worn to death. Take it with my blessing. Sorry there are no diamonds. I spent all the money in TK Maxx"). That was a 999 moment:  someone call a doctor - we need stitches here - my legacy is at stake!
So my fashion assets are diminishing just when I've stopped refreshing the inventory.  Sadly, I think I'll be switching off the life support on the Houlihans (although I feel aggrieved and entitled to a new pair - yes, Intermix, Spring Street New York, you may be seeing these dustbunnies soon). Not all is lost: I reckon I can save the Westwood shirt with a soak in bleach and if all else fails a Dylon machine dye. By hook or by crook, that coat's going to make it: I just have to get round to finding someone who can perform the requisite surgery.
There is something that pleases me enormously about having things repaired. Please note the use of the passive voice. I hate repairing things myself. When I repair things they inevitably tear, split and erupt like they're contracted clothing psoriasis on the very next wear. I consider my approach to mending pragmatic, dare I say innovative? Bored of threading a needle and sewing up a loose hem? StopShop says reach for the sellotape instead (and give that garment an intriguing crackle no one will quite be able to place every time you wear it). Forget It bags, get yourself an It stapler. Carefully used, it is a fashion must have. A colleague of my husband's once revealed he had replaced the holey pockets in his trousers by stapling Tesco plastic bags in their place. Practical, capacious AND waterproof. Genius!  If I liked this coat less I would definitely have a go at dabbing it back together with superglue - but only if the Pritt Stick didn't work first.
So if mending is ok for the Stopped Shopper, what about remodelling. A couple of years ago a good friend (Suzanne, you know I'm talking about you), recommended I take some old stuff to Junky Styling, a hip East London combo specialising in using old clothes to make new ones. Ever since I have had a large bag ready and waiting for them to work their magic. This year in particular, the idea of outfits rising phoenix-like from a couple of bags of old grot sounds very exciting. But is this true to the StopShop ethos? I haven't quite decided.
Let's see how desperate I get as the year goes by and the charms of shopping my shrinking closet start to pall.  I can't see me going all Gok Wan and revamping my old outfits with an exotic new belt or scarf, so I think I'm safe from excessive belt and scarf spending: a) I don't believe an outfit is transformed by a new belt or a scarf. It just looks like the same outfit with, well, a new belt or a scarf.  And b) scarves and I don't get on. However artlessly draped they look in the shop, back home I look as if I've just escaped from the Boston Strangler.
But the thing that preys on my mind most are earrings. Do they count as clothing or do they not? There is a pair of earrings that I noticed (on an Internet shopping site) before Christmas. Only last week that same site let me know that they had been reduced by 90 (that's nine oh) percent - scarcely more than the price of a cinema ticket. Earrings remember. Not clothes. Teeny weeny wardrobe footprint. Taking up no hanger space belonging to husband. They could share digs with all their other earring kind: on my bathroom shelf, or (for reasons I can't fathom) in the fruit bowl downstairs. Virtually invisible.  Ok. It's confession time. I came. I saw. I popped them into my virtual basket. But with my finger hovering over "proceed to payment" doubt struck. Surely stuff that dangles from your ear lobes is even more frivolous and unnecessary than clothing - after all clothes do fulfil a basic human need. Even page 3 of the Daily Telegraph hasn't yet reported women dying of exposure because of bare ears.
On the other hand they would be a small and cheering purchase. So there they sit in the virtual basket, waiting for someone else to save me from temptation, or for me to be up late browsing the Internet one night on this week's business trip, a glass of wine at my elbow and suddenly think "Sod it, life's too short, I want them. Send them NOW!"
What I am clear about is that functional practical things are not be included in StopShop - new tights, haircuts, camping equipment, that kind of thing. Stuff I need. But obviously I have to need them in a 'this is really necessary' way, rather than a 'my god those Houlihans are so much cheaper in Intermix than in Harvey Nix, I really need them'  way.  Trouble is I'm not much good at telling the difference.
So to be on the safe side I've found myself drawn to the ugly and functional as a way of making sure I'm not kidding myself. For example, I have become strangely fixated on this bag. Sensible, practical, pleasant and not terribly glamorous, it is a nun amongst bags. But if I'm going to invest in a bag at all then surely it may as well be an attractive one? I hear good things about the Prada nylon back pack (not the price which is a mere £500 for the real deal or £100 from a website in China).  But Prada luggage is hardly in the spirit of StopShop. It would be like deciding to stop shopping and having the hallway decorated in mink wallpaper.
Mother Superior, below, is a more reasonable £60 on Amazon (actually it is £69.99 but I generally follow the mathematical rounding rule taught to me at my mother's knee: if you are buying something for yourself always round down to the nearest £10, unless it costs over £150 when you may round down to the nearest hundred. However, when buying for someone else, or gossiping about profligate shopping friends, always round up).

I've wavered and vacillated about this stupid bag so much that Amazon have started sending me stalking, 'you know you want it, it's here, come and buy it, it wants to come home with you' emails.... Sod it. Life's too short. I don't want it. Don't send it now!

STOPSHOP 3: The Paris of the North

For most fashionistas, the perfect location for a shopping weekend would be Paris.  For me, it's Preston, Lancashire. True the boulevards (Fishergate and Friargate) don't quite match up to the Champs Elysees or Saint Honore. But can you find a TK Maxx, a Primark, Debenhams (and the now sadly defunct Ethel Austin) virtually next door to each other on the Boulevard Haussman? I think not.
Preston, I should explain, is my home town. And as many of my family of clothes-obsessed shoppers are still based there, it has been the scene of much thoughtless female frittering, the fruits of which are currently clogging up my shelves. It is an undistinguished looking Northern mill town belted by ring roads (an American friend stopping off there en route for Scotland once phoned me in horror: "I'm in your home town. Was it really badly bombed in the War?"  No, I had to tell her. We did all that ourselves), but it is on the borders of some of the most beautiful scenery in the North of England. It's handy for the Lake District; right on the doorstep of the Forest of Bowland; within striking distance of the Yorkshire Dales. Many Prestonians use this to the full - they spend their leisure time heading North to romp in our great national parks. We head the other way to queue in the carparks of the great retail outlet parks. In fact when my family go up to the Lakes, we often don't get much further than the giant Lakeland Plastics superstore at Windermere.
So it was with some caution that StopShop stepped off the train at Preston railway station last weekend, accompanied by teenage daughter. The official reason for the trip was to see the folks and hand over (and hopefully receive) Christmas booty, but I have never been up there and not come back with a bag full of bargains. For StopShop a weekend in Preston would be like running over hot coals. Sadly we arrived with time to spare. Hmmm. Where IS there to wile away an hour or so close to the station? I know Primark and TK Maxx. Brilliant!
Primark and I have a vexed relationship.  On so many levels I disapprove of it - some of them ethical but most of them aesthetic. The minute I step into the store I become all designery and fey -  twirling a virtual green carnation and looking down my nose. Not quite comme il faut, don't you know. All that viscose. Hard to explain, then, that almost every bra I own comes from Primark. If I get knocked over by a car, the paramedics will think my name is Secret Possessions.  No surprise then, that within ten minutes of leaving the train I was being restrained by my daughter from buying yet another pair of cotton flannel pyjamas (in the cutest black and white polka dots and only FIVE POUNDS!!!). "Mum, StopShop means not shopping, remember?"
Primark had a strange effect on her too. I love the way she and her friends dress. They have that easy, North London teenage style - layers thrown together seemingly effortlessly. I find artless impossible. When Anna Wintour scornfully derided "matchy matchy" styling a small part of me died. I love matchy matchy. It's like solving a crossword - you know you've got it right. If I wear more than two colours at once I think I look like a crazy lady, with a dog on a string and a shopping trolley full of junk, shouting at passersby and scratching my crotch in public. In order to avoid this, I do perhaps take things a little far:  even my underwear matches my outerwear.
But back to Primark. I can only conclude that the mind-altering chemicals in the airconditioning at Primark were particularly concentrated last Friday afternoon in the Preston branch, because the very daughter who was so sneery about the, yes I have to admit, BOLD, shoes I returned last week, was soon rifling through the racks trying to find her size in a polyester fleece all in one pyjama cow suit, (complete with feet, pink belly, hooves and a hood with a cow face).
 
Later we were in my mum's house, exchanging Christmas presents. In her prime my mum was to shopping what Kenya is to marathon running - a woman so dedicated to bargains she is prepared to jab her feet into any shoes from size 3 to size 6 1/2 - keeps her options open on the sale racks. Technically I think she's a size 5. I don't get to see her feet very often but I imagine that by now they look like the inside of a lava lamp.
You would think that being the eldest daughter of such a shopping superstar would reap dividends at Christmas. Reader you would be wrong. My mother has long seen Christmas as the perfect opportunity to offload some of the more glaring shopping mistakes she has made in previous years. Attempts to return items to the store from which they purport to come, usually attract a crowd of shop assistants to view them. "My goodness. I remember those. Didn't we have those five years ago? Fetch May from the staff room, she's been here the longest. May, come and see what this woman's brought in...."
One Summer my mother called me to complain about some silk pyjamas she'd had someone bring back from Hong Kong.  She'd been imagining Katherine Hepburn. She'd ended up with Bruce Lee. What a laugh we had about the nasty things  - how badly they fit, how low they hung in the crotch, the lurid colour, the giant golden dragon . "Just give them away" I remember suggesting, wiping tears of hilarity from my eyes.....  Guess what I unwrapped that Christmas morning?
So the trepidation I felt last Friday when she handed me my Christmas parcel was considerable.  Mum hadn't done her usual pre Xmas call to ask me what I want. That meant she'd gone completely off piste. Then she told it me it was just my kind of thing and my heart sank. Mum hasn't really understood "my thing" since we argued about me growing my fringe out twenty years ago. It must be something to wear. Clearly she hadn't consulted my sister (who has very good taste) either - damn!
Here it is:

So it's off to M&S for me, to send the staff on a trip down Memory Lane. Not that they'll own up to it. The Per Una label is suspiciously slashed - the true sign of an Outlet buy, and there are no other visible labels. Hmm. I'd better just give it away. Watch out all of you. If you're a size 10 and enjoy looking like you've been coloured in with Sharpies, it could be heading your way!

Bearing gifts...

Great excitment at StopShop Towers yesterday morning when Husband (he whose entire wardrobe fits onto seven coathangers) flung two large FedEx boxes into my lap saying "Going well this Stop Shop thing I see!".
Sigh. Useless to explain.  For an intelligent man he has a total mental block about the most elementary logic around shopping. These items were ordered them before StopShop. Ipso vero, just because they happened to arrive after doesn't make them part of the StopShop rules. As Einstein put it time is all relative (or was that Dr Who?). QED!
Anyway of course I didn't own up that I have been virtually up at the window whining for these boxes like a pining dog. Nor that knowing that they were on their way has been why I have been able to chuck every tempting 70% reduction sale notice airily into the bin.
So after sliding said boxes to the floor with studied negligence until husband left the room, I waited until he was safely out of earshot, then fell upon them.
A couple of minutes later, when the mushroon cloud of sticky tape, torn cardboard and tissue paper had settled I was in possession of: one pair small stud earrings for daughter (to replace ones bought her for Christmas, one of which leapt out of her ear and down the nearest crack in the floor boards about ten minutes into Christmas morning); similar for myself (ok they were a about the same price as a capuccino); a strangely draped dress (much reduced) - one of the "weekend" dresses referenced in an earlier post and a pair of somewhat surprising shoes.
It was good that these shoes arrived at this early point in my StopShop campaign. I think they were A Sign.
For a start, they had clearly been ordered, probably on my iPhone, at a boring bit in a Christmas film, after several glasses of white wine, in the spirit of there's life in the old dog yet. As Graham Norton would no doubt wisely remark. "Cab here for Mrs Mutton!"
If I say that their main colours are purple, neon orange and silver, I think you will feel more sorrow than disappointment at my lapse in taste.
But truth to tell, they would probably be sitting amongst all the other oddities in my 'It's because no one else wants them they're so cheap" collection, were it not for the fact that by some supernatural intervention by the Stop Shopping Gods, the retailer had sent me the wrong size.
Reader, how proud I would be to tell you all that I simply shrugged my shoulders, patiently packaged them up and trotted down to the post office to return them.
But I did not.
I wriggled, squirmed and jabbed my oversized tootsies into them like one of the Ugly Sisters. I tried them on with thin socks, thinner tights, no socks at all. I hobbled around my bedroom in them like a pig in heels. It was no good. They looked like two garish balloon animals, full of walnuts.
Finally after a protracted conversation whilst the customer service department explained to me that out of stock means literally there are no more shoes, I gave up,  patiently packaged them up and trotted down to the post office etc etc.
I felt better almost immediately after I had shown a picture of them to my daughter and she'd stopped laughing.
But the shopping gremlin inside me has planted a seed of a thought that somehow I am owed a pair of shoes. Thank goodness I am out of town for that Manolo Blahnik sale.....

STOPSHOP 1: New Years Resolutions and all that

It was after the third mywardrobe.com box had arrived for me this Christmas that the idea for this blog crossed my mind.
I love buying clothes. I seriously do. Left to my own devices barely a week goes by without me picking up some little thing or other. I love shopping. I love the whole process of trying things on. I daydream about how and where I will showcase my new gladrags.
My passion is enabled by a job that involves a lot of travel (I never seem to have packed quite the right items of clothes, thus necessitating 'essential' purchases en route - and it's always sale season somewhere); a husband who cares so little for clothes that I was able to expand into his wardrobe space and take over half of it before he noticed and, most of all, my absolute love of a bargain. My favourite three words in the English language have to be "Sale Now On". ("New Season's Stock" never quite does it for me.)
For bargainistas like me these are golden days. My personal inbox is crammed with ways for me to save money feeding my fashion habit. This morning I counted seventeen different retail establishments who have been in touch with me since Christmas with tempting offers: a new look just a click away.
My recent mywardrobe.com extravaganza was prompted by their pre-sale, pre-Christmas 30% discount preview: not to be missed. If it hadn't been for the Issey Miyake sample sale just a few weeks earlier; that 60% reduction at Liberty, the additional discount at Urban Outfitters and the fantastic stock, price slashed at various online emporia, I could have had a reasonably parsimonious Christmas.
My pre and post Christmas haul included a nice new Vivienne Westwood slouchy dress (so handy for traveling); a pair of rather avant garde trousers (but hell, I'm sure I can carry them off. They just need the right shoes) - again, thanks to Auntie Viv (I have so many of her clothes I feel we are practically related); two more casual dresses for 'weekends' (those weekends that only happen in sunday supplements where one dons a cashmere smock rather than one's sons old jeans); a pair of shoes (still in transit); a large "signature piece" necklace and some adventurous earrings which keep getting caught in my clothes. They were all incredible bargains. I don't regret a single one of them.
However, call me Isaac Newton, but there must be some basic physical law or other about the maximum density of coathangers vs the available volume of cupboard space. And frankly I'm spending too much money to afford a bigger house.
Instead of six figure savings/a collection of early Damien Hirsts/a flat in the Algarve I have two and a half wardrobe fulls of clothes, plus a few random boxes under the spare bed. I throw things out with glee but I replace them just as eagerly.
So, I wondered, could I just stop? I have enough clothes to keep me going. They're pretty nice on the whole (there are some notable exceptions, more of which as time goes on). Why don't I just stop shopping and see what happens?
I've read enough articles to know about "shopping your own closet". There are certainly enough permutations available in mine.
So that's what this blog is about: can you love clothes like I do and yet not buy them for a year? Does it really work trying to make new looks out of your old stuff? And most of all can I resist temptation?
I'll pass on the tips I gather; the sales I'm missing; the 'must haves' I mustn't have and perhaps every now and again I'll set aside a limited sum and get suggestions on what I should spend it on.
Oh and by the way, the Manolo Blahnik sale in their chi-chi Chelsea HQ starts next Friday. Check out the second room. That's where they keep the older stuff which is seriously (and I mean seriously) reduced.