Charity Shop Finds - Simple Fixes

Sometimes it's a simple as changing/replacing the buttons. I got this gorgeous vintage Hardy Amies wool jacket in Shelter in Stockbridge for a ridiculous bargain of £8. Two buttons were missing from the jacket and I looked for ages for something with a bit of interest. I came across these gorgeous buttons on lotsofbuttons.com which were absolutely perfect:

I love the heritage style of the buttons, they go really well with the tweed but from a distance don't distract from the overall blazer. I got some other gorgeous buttons from lotsofbuttons that will hopefully make their way onto things soon. Massive recommendation for that website, it took about 5 days for them to arrive and they were being shipped from the US! 

C x

Charity Shop Finds - Winter

Here's a round up of finds from the last couple of months.

 I got this cute knitted top with a bow for a bargain £3 and the pink 100% merino knit (Uniqlo) for £4 in Shelter on Forrest Road. That shop always has nifty bargains.

This M&S Limited Collection 100% silk blouse was a steal on the £3 rail at Save The Children on Nicholson St.

These were from my favourite charity shop of all - Barnardo's Stockbridge ♥ - The cardigan was £6.99 and the blouse (Dotty Ps) £4.29. 


More pictures to come!


C x

A Cardigan Girl is on Twitter

...at the very thoughtful address twitter.com/ACardiganGirl.

I don't really know what I'm doing yet, but I've heard when people follow you it's a good thing.

C x

Hand-me-down blouse

While we're on the subject of lace, here's a super easy project I managed to do in 5 minutes. The original blouse owner was much better endowed in the chest than me, so I looked a bit daft in it. Because the cap sleeves are only attached 2/3 around the arm hole, I could do a straight stitch on either side of the hip up to the underarm without messing with the sleeves at all (I would have had to undo seams in the arms if the sleeves had been longer). I originally thought about putting a tuck in each sleeve too, but in the end, the exaggerated shape next to the fitted bodice looked quite dramatic, so I left the sleeves oversized. The skirt is that fabulous bargain I got in Primark at the start of the year.

C x

Charity Shop Find - Belated June

Volunteering in a charity shop has been oddly cathartic. Being surrounded by clothes, good or bad quality, has made me appreciate the variety of clothes in my own wardrobe, and when it comes to my addiction to sales and special offers, realising that I can always pick up something similar for even less within four or five charity shops has stopped that feeling of missing out when I walk past a sale without looking in. 

Seeing the kinds of things people donate also reminds me of how ridiculous my consumerist desires could become. Trends barely a month old are recognisable among the recent donations, as more harem pants and floor length skirts than we can sell fill the rails. Sometimes these cast offs match the styles (but never the quality) of the vintage rail, and you can be damn sure it'll be in fashion again one day. A member of my family has this sussed, and deliberately puts clothes into storage, to discover them a few years later when they're next in fashion. Do you ever watch those Gok Wan TV shows where he visits the wardrobes of women with sales addictions, and they have cupboards and drawers bursting with clothes? We buy into the next trend, but where does really that get us? As I was wondering this, I looked through my wardrobe, and noted that since I stopped trying to keep up with trends, my clothes (now around 50% from charity shops) have started to become a cohesive collection of mix and match pieces (how often I would have to buy a new top to match a new skirt!), which offers the potential for longer term style. I may not look on trend, but the money I might be able to save and put towards a life experience (hello holiday) is, for me, worth infinitely more.

So here's the ONE new piece of clothing I bought in June, from Bethany Christian Trust on Hamilton Place. It's a gem, and I consider it underpriced at £5. 

Black wool Banana Republic kilt, £5.

(Antoni & Alison pink silk shirt, satin bow from the sewing kit, Dune pumps)

It's very, very heavy, so not really practical for summer. Oh, actually wait, I live in Scotland, it's probably completely appropriate for July (there were flash floods in Edinburgh, people lost their cars! In July!).

C x

High Street Clothes in Charity Shops

When is it okay to buy high street in charity shops/thrift stores?

In my rules of charity shop rummaging, I wrote that in general, you want to go for vintage/designer and avoid high street clothes. But there are plenty of exceptions.

You can change colour, size, even decoration, but the one thing you can't change about clothes is the material. Clothes from the high street are often made as quickly as possible so that they reach the high street while the 'microtrend' is still in. To achieve fast turnaround, materials need to be easy to sew/print/size, so tend to be made from thinner, cheaper material, like thin cotton, polycotton and polyesters. By the time they reach charity shops/thrift stores, cheap material will be well worn, so if it doesn't look tired and worn yet, it may not be far away from it.

But sometimes, there are some real gems. High-end high street shops like Whistles, Hobbs, Jaeger, Cos, Banana Republic and LK Bennett produce high quality clothes, and charity shops in affluent areas frequently receive these types of donations.

Hence my love of the charity shops in Stockbridge, one of the most affluent areas in Edinburgh. Recently, I found this gorgeous Whistles top, featuring a crochet Peter-Pan collar, in Barnardo's. Whistles is a great, high quality company, so I didn't mind the £10 price tag, more than I usually think to spend on a top.

I'm currently job hunting, and I think this would be perfect for office-wear with a smart pencil skirt and cute Mary-Janes. Very Emma Pillsbury from Glee.

(source: What Would Emma Pillsbury Wear)

Franca at Oranges and Apples recently wrote an excellent guide to Edinburgh Vintage and Charity Shops, outlining the best places to find good quality pieces. One shop I'd additionally recommend is the Shelter shop on Teviot Place (Bristo Sq). Its vicinity to the university means there's a great mixture of clothes. I picked up this Banana Republic wrap cardigan for a bargain £5 (the buttons on the sleeves, ohmyIlovethem):

And that's the plaid skirt I got in the Lands End sale a couple of months ago - I LOVE burgundy :)

But I don't want you to think I don't appreciate low and mid high street brands! They regularly make good quality clothes, but finding them in the jumble of charity shops might just require an extra bit of rummaging.. Charity shops have become more savvy in recent years to only stock good quality clothes, and send worn, overused clothes to fabric recycling companies. These can be made into blankets for the homeless and for the Red Cross. This is why you shouldn't bin clothes, even if they're ripped or stained - still donate them!

C x

Tulle Time ~ Cardigan Love

It was only a matter of time.

(image via fairycandles)

If I was a lady in the 1950s, I would wear cropped cardigans and tulle tea skirts all the time, for dinner dances or just sipping a Martini on the porch.

Cardigan Love

Last week of dissertation fever, so haven't had a chance to get out and hunt the charity shops. Did indulge in a few too many catalogs though, and spotted some good styling tips for cardigans:

Boden V-Neck Cashmere Cardigan - I charitised my one and only v-neck cardigan thinking it didn't go with anything. I like how this is styled open over a different neckline, and the jewel details stops it being frumpy.

Boden - the same cardigan, styled with silver. I love pink and silver together (except on trashy people).

Another v-neck cardigan, this time by NW3 at Hobbs and styled with an open peter-pan collar. How TRENDY are those these days, right? 

Whistles cable knit cardigan. This is divine. It looks like a little Chanel-style jacket from a distance but up close is a thick, cosy cardi. $$$ :(

Kettlewell long cascade wrap - I personally think I'm too short to pull off these gorgeous cascade cardigans that are so à la mode. The pairing with the grape palazzo pants is like something straight out of Gucci SS'11, you think? 

And this I just spotted on weheartit.com. I think this gorgeous little cardi could be DIY'd fairly easily...

...which brings me to my next order of business, I am going to attempt my own DIY clothing the week after next, using finds from charity shops. Very exciting!

C x

Cardigan Love

From the super-girly...

To the classic, androgynous...

(via NatalieDee.com)

Cardigan Love

Bleh, I wasn't big on the whole royal wedding thing (I spent the day quietly working on my dissertation), but when I spotted the photos of the dress I had to pick up on something.

It would appear the Duchess of Cambridge is a fellow cardigan girl:

I think the whole outfit is beautiful, she looks like a princess, but I do wonder about the mohair cardigan-do you think she roasted in it? I used to have a pale blue mohair cardigan and it would boil me alive everytime I wore it indoors. Let's presume she took it off once the party started. Anyway, I wonder if mohair cardigans will have a 'moment' after this (I really hope not, they shed everywhere!)

I will set myself a mission to find some bargain mohair cardigans to post about.

C x

Janet Leigh

I came across this photo while I was procrastinating on myvintagevogue.com.

I love everything about this look, from the casually turned up collar, the perfect shade of red lipstick on the cheeky smirk, the extended arch eyebrows to the simplicity of her dark blonde hair. And, obviously, the car. I believe this is Janet Leigh of The Manchurian Candidate/Hitchcock's 'Psycho' fame, but looking much less like the usual ice-queen with white-blonde hair (hence my difficulty in identifying her!) and all the more wholesome for it. I just wanted to post this because I thought it was quite inspiring, it's very much how I think I could look on a good day if I made the effort. 

C x

P.S. I've just deleted around half the old posts of the blog, which I had meant to do when I switched over from the old useyourtulle URL but hadn't gotten around to yet. I don't think anyone was ever reading them anyway, but just to let you know, because I want to streamline the blog a bit more towards budget shopping and charity shops. It feels like it could be my niche.

Lands End Sale

Lands End is having a massively reduced sale on their Canvas collection. I managed to control the spending (for once!) and only spent £30. Here's my haul (apologies for the rubbish camera phone pictures):

Lightweight cotton funnelneck in Grey Heather (£8). I got an XS (UK8) and it's a good fit, especially around the shoulders, but spacious enough at the waist for after chocolate cake.

Plaid wool skirts in Aubergine plaid and Blackwatch plaid (£6 each). I worried myself by getting them in a US6 (UK10), thinking they might be a bit neat. But as it turned out, they were pretty loose (sitting lower on the waist than the model's), I might have even been able to go down to a US4/UK8 (but better to leave room for a Winter tummy, which is when one is likely to need a wool skirt!).

And an obligatory cardigan:

Cotton cardigan in Pale Sky (£10, but has since gone back up to £29) - it's much more icy blue than pastel, as their picture might suggest. I got this in an XS (UK8) and it's snug, but luckily not tight (the benefits of small shoulders), however, I'd suggest if your shoulders are more normal that you go up a size.

There's more nice things that I unfortunately didn't have the pennies for:

Flannel, suede or leather ballet flats (£29), cotton tartan shirtdress (£24), cotton mix Argyle cardigan (£19).

And lots of nice menswear too:

Cotton mix vintage varsity cardigan (£19) [because men should wear cardigans too!], cotton Oxford shirt (£10), leather Chelsea boots (£49).

See the full sale: www.landsend.co.uk

C x

PS - Get free delivery before midnight tonight, quote FD1404.

Cardigan Love

Katy Perry in a pale blue mohair cardigan and vintage dress.

Cardigan Love

Wardrobe staple.

C x



P.S.