Sali Hughes on high street fashion for women over 35

[elotrolado]

Just read this - so true.

www.the-pool.com/fashion/fashion-honestly/2017/20/sali-hughes-on-the-british-high-street-dressing-women-over-35

I too long for those 'flattering frocks, neat at the shoulders, sleeves and neck, but with enough fabric around the middle to invisibly accommodate a bottle of red and more than 19 calories ...'

Well, if you are running a shop chain and the shop next door to you have a "drop' every Tuesday you can't afford not to. You have to keep up and offer more. There's no place for well made timeless clothes there.

It's a vicious circle and we all are feeding it.

slimshady yes that's a very good example actually! The fact it's even news that she's worn a coat more than once is ridiculous.

I also think we see this in the beauty industry now. British Beauty Blogger did a post on beauty fatigue which is basically about customers tiring of constant new launches and it struck a chord with me. After all there's only so much makeup you really need for your everyday wear yet we are constantly being bombared with info/ads on new products creating this never ending circle of want. And someone somewhere must be buying it?

Has anybody mentioned the ubiquitous 20 or 40% discount? This seems to price clothes (often made cheaply) artificially high and then allows the discount to be made as a special offer. Drives me bonkers. Just charge a fair price to start with!

I don't want to fanny about waiting for your special offers because the usual price is artificially high, I just want another pair of those jeans that fit or some more t-shirts.

H&M
Boden
House of Fraser

All culprits for this but the worst is Gap.

I don't go shopping. I don't expect to pay a pittance for clothes but I'm not paying £45 for a pair of jeans you will sell for £30 every third week or second Tuesday with your "special event" or paying £80 for a dress that is the same poor quality and cheap fabric as a £15 offering elsewhere. I'm not a mug.

Yes there is disposable fashion but we and the women Sali talks about are not purveyors of that. We want good quality basics at a reasonable price - we will pay a bit more for it. We also want to buy a few pieces each season that are a bit special or will become wardrobe staples - again we will pay.

A pp was right that there seems to only be a focus on fast fashion and that's cheap and not even aimed at us really. The problem is nobody is aiming at us. The market used to be clear - there were shops for each demographic. Now everyone is using the same model but differentiating mostly on price, not on product.

Well said Movingonup!

I was reading the papers today and laughed when I saw this advert, which was also huge in the window of my local M&S. The dress is 100% polyester and looked cheap & nasty on the shop dummy. Is this their best product that they are using it to draw people into their store?

To me, that ad is trying to draw younger women to M&S. Or saying to us, hey! you've still got it. Barking up the wrong tree, clearly! I'm glad I had it, once upon a time... But I think shops like Marks should focus on good quality gear for women over 35. What gets me is that high street stores are charging hefty prices for shoddy gear... May as well go to Primark!

Sali Hughes is my muse. She should be Saint Sali . Every word she wrote is the truth, when will manufacturers realise that statistically there are vastly more women over 20 than under 20. So we spend more, or we would if it was there to be spent on.

If you design,make and put it in the shops - We will come.

Yes I completely agree, M&S should be making high quality clothes for the over 35s. When I was a teenager and in my 20s I would never ever have shopped in M&S! Now (40 something) I would happily shop in there if they had good quality clothes, not pink polyester monstrosities.
I am sure the advert has been photoshopped to make the dress look better, this is what it looks like on the model on their own website, baggy and shapeless. I know if I wore it I would get people asking if I was pregnant.

While we are on the subject of pink, in the Guardian magazine on Saturday Jess Cartner-Morley did a piece on pink trousers. (I am not a fan of wearing pale pink anyway, the colour does nothing for me, and I still haven't recovered from the vat of pink stuff that descends on you when you have a baby girl.) The comments underneath are quite funny. She looks stylish, but if wore those trousers my arse would look about 5 miles wide! Article here:
www.theguardian.com/fashion/2017/may/19/what-wore-this-week-pink-trousers-jess-cartner-morley
In her same article in the magazine (but not in the one online) JCM recommends a Zara dress very similar to the M&S one, but shorter. It looks like something my 5 year old would put on a Barbie.
Now the Guardian is definitely not a teen magazine.... with this kind of stuff being recommended no wonder I despair at going shopping.

Nice work, elektra. The comments section!

Ah yes. The Guardian's fashion coverage. Their "all ages" page is a nod in the right direction but, otherwise, it's all either teen fashion from Zara (although not at teen prices) or the most outré items from Bond Street.

Interesting post about cheap clothes and cheap food, BadRabbit. I don't think you can disentangle the politics. When clothing manufacturing moved overseas, the jobs went too. Years ago, I lived near a couple of big clothing factories - if you didn't have qualifications but worked hard, you could earn reasonable money there. They shut down long ago and in their place? Supermarkets.

Where I think a comparison with food falls down is that, if you have the resources, (money/time/equipment/skills) you can eat well from supermarket food. Whereas even with money, it's very hard to find consistently well made, quality clothes on the high street. I've recently kicked Whistles into touch because the quality was atrocious. The only retailer I can think of where I've never had a single dud (and I don't stop there that often) is Toast.

Yes, I commend them for "all ages" but all the models are still...models: tall, whippet-thin and glamorous. And they always dress them in an outlandish way that would get you burnt as a witch if you left the confines of Shoreditch No one is allowed just to look chic and understated.

Oh and Jaegar - never shopped there myself but heard good things about the quality. And they've just gone into administration which just about says it all really.

The problem for me isn't the quality of a £5 primark top, but the fact that there is so much out there at 10 times the price that is barely any better.

I agree. My last Whistles top bobbled after one (careful) wash. I used to love that shop but they're dead to me now

I still have some Oasis / Warehouse that was made in England. And Benetton made in Italy. In fact, I've held on to a bit of 90s / 00s stuff as it's still going strong. And I won't find replacements...

I have used BAM clothing ( bamboo) - DH swears by the tops and they are wearing really well. They are basically sporty, but do have a reasonable range of basic T's - good and long too ( my DD is an inch taller than me at 5'11' has had some stuff from there)

Old Town looks interesting - sorry, I've forgotten who posted the link but thank you. Miss Willey, who 'is able to 'advise on style, fit and to discuss the merits of the various fabrics' sounds like my kind of woman

Pity I'm nowhere near Norfolk but it's got me thinking about checking out made to measure more locally. I would happily save up for it if it meant I got what I wanted.

Bamboo is just fancy viscose, though.

[happy sigh]
i have found my people

Only 24 here and agree with every word...

That hideous M&S pink dress, has a sister that is trousers!

Creemcheez - yes my favourite comments on the JCM pink trouser article were 'looks like Waynetta Slob' and 'if I wore those I would look like a pink hippo'

As for quality of clothes - it is so annoying when you finally find an item of clothing you like and then it bobbles. Earlier in the year I found a nice top in Next, flattering cut, decent length, elbow length sleeves with a subtle detail. I liked it so much I bought it in two colours and had lots of compliments. Unfortunately it is polyester and after a few wears one of the tops has gone bobbly. They were about £20 each but I liked the style so much I would definitely have paid more than that for a better quality fabric.

Floisme, have a plough through Etsy. Many sellers make things to measure. I quite often buy trousers from there now. Or find some patterns you like and a nice local dressmaker. That is what everyone did for much of the twentieth century. Having things altered to fit well also helps. I've had coats made more fitted, trousers nipped in at the waist etc. It is surprisingly inexpensive to get something made for you, when you compare the prices of somewhere like Toast.

I'm looking for a nice dress for my DS2's graduation in July. I thought I'd look for something quite plain in design but go up to a better brand than I usually buy. I was really shocked when I went into LK Bennett to find all the dresses were in synthetic fabrics, looked very M&S. I might have to buy something a bit more informal to get cotton or linen I think.