Emma Watson Wedding Dresses

[YearsSinceISawYou]

All those at the Earth shot Awards were asked to wear outfits that considered the environment-I suppose this means second hand or worn before. At any rate, that's what they did.

Along comes Emma Watson with her Harris Reed designed dress, made from 10 upcycled wedding dresses from Oxfam.

AIBU to think that if Emma really cared about this sort of stuff-as she often says she does-she would have left the 10 wedding dresses in Oxfam, so that 10 people would have been able to recycle 10 dresses-with the added bonus that they would have been affordable for those people.

Instead, she takes all ten of them and chops them up, thus showing herself to be an over-privileged hypocrite, who cares more about making a headline than 'saving the planet' or thinking about the women who could have made real use of those dresses.

Surely she had something else in her wardrobe that she could have used.

I like the idea! But not that keen on the black trousers.

I love that other dress she's worn this week though, I normally don't go for chintzy sofa print but that outfit is lush

I got my wedding dress from Oxfam, it was a sample of a well known brand. The tag said £2600, I paid £250.

Definitely not all old dresses no one would want.

There were dresses of all styles and priced appropriately.

Some were really old fashioned and I imagine they would have ended up in the rag bag eventually.

As long as she paid for them who cares what she did with them. They charity got the money and publicity.

@Glitterybug

Have you had a look at the wedding dresses available on oxfam?

onlineshop.oxfam.org.uk/bridal/category/bridal?N=4131982658&Ns=product.creationDate|1&Nr=AND(product.active:1,NOT(sku.listPrice:0.000000))&No=0

1980s monstrosities and fast fashion high street wedding dresses from places like wed2be and asos.

Best thing for them to be cut up and reused.

So if a dress isn't brand new and designer it should be cut up? Blimey.

@FirewomanSam

It’s of course difficult to say without seeing the wedding dresses hers was made from but I’d wager there are probably more second-hand wedding dresses out there than there are women currently in the market for a second-hand wedding dress.

So much of what gets donated to charity shops ends up a huge burden for the charities, who have to find storage for it all and have to make arrangements to get rid of things that don’t sell. I’ve heard that unsold clothing (though hopefully not wedding dresses!) often ends up getting shipped to poorer countries, who then end up with piles of rejected poor-quality crap clothing that they in turn have to deal with. So I think giving old charity-shop clothing a new lease of life and turning it into something new and exciting sounds like a wonderful idea.

I think they just sell any unwanted clothing to textile recycling companies. Probably make more for the charity that way than selling through the shops.

@SmellyOldOwls the charity shops do sell things to textile recyclers, but those companies sometimes send things overseas to be sold in poorer countries. I only did a quick Google so there are probably better sources but this article gives a good overview: www.rd.com/article/what-happens-used-clothing-donations/

You're not only being unreasonable but also ridiculous.

[quote FirewomanSam]@SmellyOldOwls the charity shops do sell things to textile recyclers, but those companies sometimes send things overseas to be sold in poorer countries. I only did a quick Google so there are probably better sources but this article gives a good overview: www.rd.com/article/what-happens-used-clothing-donations/[/quote]
Interesting thanks - I thought everything went to be recycled. Bit crap when even the recycling companies are pushing rubbish onto other people.

So if a dress isn't brand new and designer it should be cut up? Blimey.

Another one who can't fucking read. What's happened to mumsnet these days?

Obviously it would be more eco-friendly and less wasteful if people were happy to just throw on a dated dress and wear it but I don't know how you'd make people happy to do this. It's very unlikely that there were 10 perfectly good wedding dresses that 10 brides would have been happy to wear.

Obviously it would be more eco-friendly and less wasteful if people were happy to just throw on a dated dress and wear it but I don't know how you'd make people happy to do this.

Exactly. Nobody in 2021 wants to wear an 80s puffy meringue. With a few alterations the fabric could be used to make something different - such as in this case.

But Mumsnet hates Emma because she once said trans rights are human rights so she does get a very hard time on here. If Queen JK Rowling has turned up wearing that it would have been "oh wow what a great idea to use up unwanted wedding dresses, better than throwing it away."

By the way ... Emma didn't actually do anything to the dresses herself. The designer did that.

Crikey OP you don't like Emma Watson at all do you?

There's Oxfam's that sell wedding dresses specifically - so the price tag is more than 10 or something along that, it's 100s - but the dresses are often donated designer ones or come directly from designers' old stock with an original price tag of 1,000s. (As shown in a post above.) They certainly aren't all meringues or 80s horrors.

Not clear on whether Emma's dress came from 10 dresses or if the designer had 10 dresses and made several from them. What Emma is wearing doesn't look like the martierla of 10 at all.

But whatever you think about the horror of someone with money buying from a charity shop (directly or indirectly) or the horror of a wedding dress being can we all agree the result isn't great looking - those black trousers just make it a weird outfit. Sack the designer!!

(I like the boots though)

I think they just sell any unwanted clothing to textile recycling companies. Probably make more for the charity that way than selling through the shops.

No, they don't. At the charity shop I know, they get £5 per bag - and we're talking large binbag sizes. A lot of what goes in there is the sort of tat that people dump on charity shops that would never sell anyway, but they also put stuff in there that has been out in the shop but hasn't sold. Obviously you only need to sell six things at a pound each to be doing better than that. So Emma Watson buying ten wedding dresses of which at best only one would have sold normally was doing this charity a major favour.

I think this when the Sewing Bee do their upcycle week. The amount of decent 2nd hand stuff that gets hacked up for a TV show ! Gets on my nerves. But then, TV shows were never environmentally friendly. Best we can all do, is do our best.

It's interesting that so many posters utterly refuse to believe that people in lower income areas go to charity shops because that is all they can afford.
I can only assume those posters are working in charity shops in affluent areas.
People donate to charity shops in lower income areas because they want people to have access to cheap items.
There are also different types of charity shops with different ethos. But reframing charity shops as purely capitalist endeavours is contrary to the most recent research on charity retail where social, community and environmental impacts came above economics.

You can't possibly know the motives of everyone who donates to charity shops, whatever the area and its demographics. Some people will donate because it's a cause close to their heart, others because that particular charity shop has easy parking and they can't be bothered taking bags to another one further down the road.

If people are taking stuff to a RSPCA or Cancer Research shop in a lower income area hoping to help poor people get cheap stuff rather than helping the animals or funding cancer studies, they are misguided. Because those shops do not have an aim of providing cheap stuff. You could argue (and I would argue) that if you want to donate your stuff directly to the needy then you would be better donating it straight to a refugee project, or a homeless shelter, women's refuge type place.

According to one stat I found with a very quick Google, only 4% of wedding dresses worn are second hand. And that will include people who have worn their mother's/granny's dress. There is quite clearly a glut of worn-once dresses. So by repurposing them or upcycling them, all this designer is showing is that there is no need to buy a new dress, when you can cobble together a "new" one from fabric taken from old ones.

It looks shit.

Insightful comment there, Blueuggboots.

@KingsleyShacklebolt I've read the research which covered over 600 charity shops. You obviously haven't.

@KingsleyShacklebolt

Insightful comment there, Blueuggboots.

It’s mumsnet. If you want insightful debate, perhaps don’t jump on a thread on AIBU on mumsnet about a celeb and a wedding dress?

[quote ShinyHappyPoster]@KingsleyShacklebolt I've read the research which covered over 600 charity shops. You obviously haven't.[/quote]
Doesn't matter what research you've read. You still can't pretend to know the motives of everyone donating. Because all will have their own reasons for donating, and choosing that particular shop. I might not have read research covering 600 shops but I have spoken to many more than 600 customers in the 6.5 years I have been a charity shop volunteer.

Quite possibly some people are donating to a shop in the hope "poor people" will get a bargain, but their gesture in that case is misplaced. Because by and large, that's not what charity shops are about.

@KingsleyShacklebolt

Insightful comment there, Blueuggboots.

She's not wrong though.

Some of us had no choice to but to go to Oxfam for a wedding dress

there is a choice for everyone whether or not to acquire an outfit that thye plan to wear only once.

@Glitterybug

Have you had a look at the wedding dresses available on oxfam?

onlineshop.oxfam.org.uk/bridal/category/bridal?N=4131982658&Ns=product.creationDate|1&Nr=AND(product.active:1,NOT(sku.listPrice:0.000000))&No=0

1980s monstrosities and fast fashion high street wedding dresses from places like wed2be and asos.

Best thing for them to be cut up and reused.

Get over yourself, there are plenty of good quality dress designers on the first page alone.

FWIW, I really like the champagne raw silk 80’s number

AIGINAF