Defunct/forgotten brands to buy secondhand

[flaks]

Most of my clothes and bags are thrifted and I recently discovered vinted. I wonder if there are brands that are particularly high quality that I am missing out on because I don't know what I am looking for. In particular I was thinking of brands that are gone (UK or abroad) that may not have been on my radar. I used to find obscure brands in charity shops but for online it would be nice to know to what search for.

@HundredMilesAnHour you look lovely

Ha thank you!! That must have been mid-90s. We look so young! The nice thing is that we’re still good friends 30 years later. The John Rocha pants didn’t last quite as long but I’m glad the friendship made it.

This thread is giving me so much pleasure. I actually think that 80-90s era of fabulous fashion that was such great quality set me on a lifelong path to clothes addiction. 😑

@HundredMilesAnHour I had a charcoal grey Ted Baker trouser suit for work, it was so well cut, the trousers fitted perfectly and had pink satin binding on all the seams and the lining of the jacket was pink too, I loved that suit, and used to wear it with those fitted shirts with the deep cuffs if you remember them, and there was a website called Shafily I think it was called that sold women’s cufflinks so had to get shirts you could wear cufflinks in, I expect that’s unheard of now

@HundredMilesAnHour im actually quite glad in a way, it’s much less expensive to live in sainsburys TU hoodies !

@CalzoneOnLegs no darling, that’s just plain wrong! That’s verging on clothing cruelty 😂😘 The love for clothes has never left me (even in lockdown I was swanning round my flat in bizarre and totally inappropriate outfits) and the upside of being back in the office more means I get to subject my dept to my strange fashion ideas. When it was raining earlier this week, I turned up at the office in a bright green (waterproof) cape with matching bright green bucket hat (positioned at a jaunty angle of course). My global head was speechless. 😂My colleagues are getting used to me now. Poor sods.

(Of course I’m typing this from the sofa where I’m sitting in my nightie still as I can’t decide if I can even be bothered to have a shower or not)

Edit: Ah yes, women's shirts for cufflinks!!! I loved wearing cufflinks with a suit to work. And you’re right, I don’t think they do them for women any more. That might be starting me on a new random side quest to hunt for them.

I remember Ted Baker clothes being quite sophisticated and elegant before they switched to mostly occasion wear and glitzy stuff.
Whistles used to do these types of suits brilliantly too. Harvey Nichols used to stock them.
I had some Charles Thyrwitt shirts with cuff links for work!

@GellerYeller I bet they were beautiful shirts

Okay, side quest complete. You can still buy women’s shirts for cufflinks. You have to search for ‘double cuff’ or ‘French cuff”. These ones look a bit cheap and nasty maybe but that’s modern fabric/high street for you:

https://www.hawesandcurtis.co.uk/womenswear/shirts/double-cuffs-shirts

I used to pay more like £100/shirt buying them from Thomas Pink in the 90s so £30-35 seems very cheap???

I remember the first Next directory, they had little fabric swatches in.
Absolutely beautiful. I was a little young but my Mum bought loads. I remember a beautiful white suit she had with wide legged trousers and a short sleeved jacket with a tie belt.
She was always very glam

Now we’re talking…..”cut for the Dames of today” 😍

https://www.buddshirts.co.uk/collections/womens-shirts

I think their target Dames have a better budget than I do but I very much like their style. 😝

Actually I used to get some wonderful suits from Jigsaw. They were so well cut. I still miss them actually. Jigsaw in Leadenhall Market became my go-to shop for work suits.

New poster here but loving this thread. My dad used to work for an advertising agency that did the work for Next. We got all the Directories for free and OMG like you it started me on a lifetime of clothing addiction. I had a beautiful purple/blue iridescent shirt from Next with the deep cuffs and I had cufflinks to go with it. It took me on a many a night out that shirt.

Now, I’m a vinted lover. I agree Jigsaw, Toast, old Boden (which I originally had for work/ those Moon Tweed blazers- swoon) are where I gravitate to. I barely buy anything new, the quality just isn’t there. I had a Boden zip borg fleece arrive in Inpost this morning. I’m uncontrollable 🤪.

@Northerndoglover thanks for the memory- I’d forgotten you had to pay for the directory! It was full of fabric swatches if I remember rightly.

I still have the first few Next directories. The clothes are beautiful (and much more expensive than today’s).

@GellerYeller I seem to think it was £3 for the directory. It’s was quality stuff though.

I remember the price saying £3 on the front too. We got a discount on the clothes (which really didn’t help me) and I used to spend hours going through it, turning down page after page.

The Boden catalogue was fab too, you just don’t get the same feeling as browsing online imo.

I remember buying two grey wool suits in 2001, in Oasis Piccadilly (could spend hours there, and Argyll St). Both lasted years, one had a lovely metallic pinstripe through it.

I’d get my shirts in Miss Selfridge, pinks, lilacs, baby blues. And leather shoes from Faith, Office, Dolcis. I’ve still got some of my coats. Topshop cotton parka, Oasis leather jacket.

That's lovely @HundredMilesAnHour ! I was rocking a very similar look back then, with my Boxfresh t-shirt and cropped Topshop cargos made out of a fabric I can only describe as "parachute".

Great memories of nice brands long gone. I used to love Mexx! and Esprit. Maybe I'm just more European-shaped 😁

I started work in 2007 and wore cufflinks with my shirts. It was a VERY public school kind of company, so probably unusual at that point. I didn't really fit in!

Vintage Cacharel is lovely and usually reasonably priced.

I usd to love a Sunday afternoon with a cuppa and The Next Directory

I also remember Next before everything was ‘mink’ ‘blush’ or khaki.

It used to have really exciting and eye catching colours. Now it all looks like sludge.

In the 2000s I used to buy lovely clothes from French Connection, Jigsaw, Kew, Reiss, Hobbs, LK Bennett (very occasionally), Comptoir des Cotonniers, Warehouse, Jones the Bootmaker, occasionally Oasis, Boden, Noa Noa, Urban Outfitters, Topshop, and Gap (when they did great quality basics). Bolongaro Trevor. Anthropologie and Banana Republic on trips to the US. Late 90s/early 2000s I was also a fan of Kookai, Agnes b, and Racing Green until they closed. For underwear I had lovely silk, cotton and lace sets from Oasis, M&S, Miss Mandalay, Myla and Mimi Holliday and they were nicely made and pretty inexpensive. Expensive clothes were really beautifully made — I have a couple of dresses from Temperley from the 2000s, and they are gorgeous: pure silk linings and made like couture! It was easy to find great clothes in natural fibres which were well cut and lasted really well. I had lots of cotton and silk jersey items. Cardigans and jumpers were not acrylic!

Since around 2015 onwards it’s been really difficult to buy good quality clothes. Everything is polyester or viscose, badly made, garish. The last decade or so all the fashions are ugly and don’t suit the average normal woman’s body. All the pleasure of clothes shopping and buying is gone for me. These days I live in sludgy Hush skirts from Vinted, Uniqlo basics and trainers and an ugly black puffa coat: fifteen or twenty years ago I used to wear beautiful heeled boots, colourful silk dresses, gorgeous wool cardigans and tailored wool coats. Feels so depressing! 30 year old me would be utterly horrified.

👏👏 oh yes! All lower case label. My DH still has some of the St George Duffer t shirts if anyone remembers the men's ranges in Debenhams.

@SwallowsandAmazonians I have been looking at this, some great designs, happy to see they are still popular too.

https://badgerandbrown.co.uk/product-category/ladies-cufflinks/