The Small Fashion theme seems to be focusing on small batch products, really knowing where your garments come from, but unfortunately I don’t know any local designers etc. I know my mother gets some of her clothing from a boutique in Totnes where the woman designs her own fabric, gets it made and then makes the clothes from that. They are nice clothes but not really the style that I wear!
Most of the clothes in my wardrobe have one of 4 origins, High street shops – mostly cheap shops; Charity Shops – I love a good nose through these shops; The Rag Bag on ship – clothing that has been left or lost by people sailing onboard, mostly only useful for rags but sometimes I get useful stuff from it; Hand Made by Me – obviously I know the designer in this case 🙂
One of my main problems with my lifestyle and the reason I do a lot of shopping in places like Primark is that a large proportion of my clothes take a real beating and its not worth spending lots of money on something that is going to get Rust stains/Paint/Varnish/Oil on it when I’m working on ship. You never know when you might get some stain on your clothing I’m sure some of my PJ’s have paint on them! This is also the reason for a lot of my shopping in charity shops so that I can have clothes which look OK but I don’t mind if they get ruined as I didn’t pay lots for them or spend lots of time making them.
This does mean that I basically have two different sets of clothes one to work in/live in on ship and one for those months that I’m ashore. The only Me Made clothing I really take onboard with me are T-shirts as I have worked my pattern out for that one and they don’t take much fabric or time anymore, and the fit is so much better than store bought! No more pinching underarms!
At some point this Winter my aim is to get a trouser pattern fitted to my body so I not longer have to spend the whole time pulling my trousers back into place for one reason or another…But this seems to be being put on the back burner a little bit in favor of using up some of the material I have and making me more usable jumpers…
