But what has actually influenced your wardrobe shopping choices?

[DeHumanaeMentisApatheia]

There are intermittent threads asking for lists of where people shop - I’m not sure how compelling these are for readers. (And where the OP takes no active role in the thread it’s hard to believe they’re not just some sort of AI generated thing.)

Surely the crucial thing is what shapes a person’s tastes and preferences - all the more so for mature women who have more hinterland. Whether that’s your parents’ interests when you were a child, or shopping with friends as a teen, or a revelation at university or in early jobs. As much as life stages, health, environment, finances.

My ‘reading Vogue from 13’ history is all over S&B.

What influenced you, before ‘influencers’? And how does that affect how you shop now?

I agree about the polyester. I wear natural fibres as much as possible but there are times when polyester helps with structure/longevity. It’s not entirely black and white. I do wear my clothes as much as possible and care for them regardless of the fibre content and cost. Also agree with having a seamstress though finding one you trust isn’t always easy!

That’s also true.

In the distant past, during my expensive suit years, clothes were altered at the point of sale, as it were. I’d try something on in a shop and if it needed alteration it would be done in house straight away.

After those years I just used whatever service was available in the towns or cities I lived in - sometimes someone attached to a dry cleaners, sometimes an alterations business. And sometimes they were ok, and sometimes a little disappointing, so I avoided taking any irretrievable risk.

Now I have access to probably the best alterations service I’ve ever used, a good sturdy walk across town. Paying them is always a bit painful but it’s worth it. Sometimes I even go to them for advice before I order something - to find out whether it could be made to work. And I don’t have things altered to make them skin tight or to ‘show off my curves’. I do it to make things wearable. That makes it much easier to buy what I like.

Yes!! I always have room for new friends 🥰
I absolutely adore this thread - thank you for starting it @DeHumanaeMentisApatheia it's definitely one of the most interesting style & beauty threads i've read in a long time.

I also don't have many people in real life who have as much interest in clothes as i do so how fabulous to have a bunch of like-minded people here. I really hope this thread continues!

I have never had my colours done & don't really have much intetest in it. I'm red haired & pale skinned & i know what works & what doesn't & sometimes i'll ignore that because i love something too much. I have a Stella Nova sky blue shirt with huge beige spots & a dramatic neck bow. Pastels generally don't work as they make me washed out. But i love to wear it with straight leg indigo japanese jeans with a v deep turn up & gold ankle boots from Paris. I just up the bronzer / blusher / lipstick

I also adore a good pattern clash! Floral skirt / stripey jumper. Essentiel Antwerp is excelllent for this.

I find this thread fascinating too.

This is all really interesting. Brought up wearing home-made or second-hand clothes, my mum was a brilliant amateur dressmaker but rather old-fashioned (she was an older mum when I was born) and I was always a bit out of style. I lacked confidence in what to wear clothes, and I still don’t think I feel the joy in clothes that other people do.

For ethical reasons, I mostly buy secondhand now out of choice. I can sew and I could do my own alterations, but don’t often bother (although I seem to end up doing them for other people!) I think I’ve developed my own style. My outfits mostly start from footwear - I’m limited in what I can wear, and I’m excited for autumn as I can start wearing ankle boots and leggings again! Hardly ever wear skirts, I have bad varicose veins which m self-conscious about but in winter I wear short (knee length) skirts with boots and it feels liberating!

My earliest influence was probably Jackie Magazine, which advised me to wear dark tights to hide my fat legs (no veins back then) and v-necks to disguise my large breasts. I’ve pretty much stuck with that!

Ohhh - Jackie to me was all about pop stars and romance, I don’t even remember any clothes! (Though it did encourage hyperventilation when some miraculous beauty product from the US was about to be launched here.)

There was another magazine for younger girls that had cut-out dolls with a choice of outfits? Now, that was a fashion influence. The newsagent we bought it from was next door to the knitting / crochet shop where my mother commissioned ponchos for us during their brief era. (Our hotpants she made herself on the Singer. Burgundy cord.)

Bunty magazine!!

I had a scrapbook, into which I would stick the paper dolls & my favourite outfits. At about seven or eight, I then progressed on to a notebook in which I'd design & draw outfits for my Barbie dolls, which I'd hand-sew using scraps begged from my paternal granny (another seamstress!).

I loved making lists of the fabrics that I planned to use - half the time I think it was because I was obsessed with the sound of the words, as much as the look & feel of the fabric! Watered silk ... devoré velvet ... organdie ... gauze ... charmeuse ...!! So evocative, even if I didn't always know what they meant. Oh, & chiffon ... a word that's meant to be whispered!!

I loved hand-sewing & embroidery when I was young, but never enjoyed sewing on a machine in the same way, so any skill I had is long gone. My other (maternal) granny did try to teach me to knit & crochet, but was a very impatient woman, & I was slow to learn - so I gave up on that after she lost her temper & threatened to stab me with her crochet hook ... 😶

Popping in again to say that a seamstress is a must (for things that aren't already bespoke). I am an hourglass so basically everything has to be taken in at the waist.

Plus I have very clear ideas about what alterations are required to make a garment exactly what I would like.

Literally - and I mean that - one of my considerations when moving house (SW London) is proximity to a good seamstress! I pop in to mine about once a month or so with an item.

My grandmother. Born in 1919 and a wardrobe full of beautiful clothes mostly in silks for evening. Plus she only wore natural fabrics, I remember her taking me shopping in the 70’s/80’s and it was all poly crimplene and the new fabrics that made you stink unless you had good deodorant - which almost no one wore in the 70’s so these new fabrics made men in particular honk !

so I remember her cupboard of evening clothes and I remember her buying and making me silk party dresses - girls used to dress up for normal children’s parties in the 70’s and 80’s so every year I had a new multi layered party dress.

for day she wore wool and cashmere. Lived in Scotland so lots of lovely knitted jumpers and wool kilt type skirts in really high quality tweed. I buy no acrylic or poly jumpers EVER because of her. They don’t last and they stretch horribly. But I’ve had some cashmere jumpers 2 decades. Now my size has changed massively in that time so I only kept the big cardies and they’re now my sitting around in the evening comfies.

Also she was a home economics teacher, head of home economics. Which I’m not sure people would respect now (food technology) but back then it was one of the most important subjects. She taught girls (only girls did it) how to launder, how to look after babies (babies came into school), how to cook and stretch cheap cuts of meat to make them delicious. This was a poor area so preparing young women for motherhood was really important as most would have children before 20. She was an amazing cook and baker and taught this really well, for years after she died I heard from people in the town what an impression she made on their cooking skills.

so she taught me to look after clothes, how to mend successfully, how to store them, how to launder them so they lasted.

even last week when I returned from a holiday cottage I immediately bagged the 4 cashmere items and put them in the freezer. I then took them out and let them come up to room temperature overnight and then back they go in the freezer for a few days. I simply didn’t trust that this old cottage didn’t have moths.

My shape and size has changed dramatically over last few years and what did suit me doesn’t now so I’ve replaced everything. All the stuff that people find unfashionable, high quality wool is dead cheap on Vinted and eBay. The desire for ‘new’ is massive, I have almost no interest in new unless it’s Brora, Liberty, Serena Bute, Victoria beckham, Cefinn, Markus Lupfer and Paul Smith, I shop in the sales occasionally but really almost everything is second hand - so much Me and Em clothes are really cheap second hand. I love really bright colours so I’m not wearing beige, that’s not what classic is to me. I like bright, clear colours, I can’t wear the muddy version of colours.

I wear trainers with everything, there’s one style I like and I basically have it in 20 colours so whatever I wear I have trainers to match. They do this trainer in kids and women’s so my feet are small enough to wear kids as they go up to a size 6 in kids. I’ve never paid more than £30 for a pair, they’re all suede or leather. The adult women’s in the new colours are £80 but people really often get rid of kids trainers without them being worn. I very rarely buy something that’s not brand new with tags, occasionally I have and the items not been treated well.

I’m also really lucky size wise to be able to buy a lot of antique clothing as people were so much shorter 😂 I’ve got 3 antique 1920’s dresses, some day dresses from the 30’s, all silk. Bought for less than £30 each. They’re all hand made, you literally can’t buy that quality for less than couture prices. One of the dresses I have is completely hand beaded. I’ve also got a couple of opera capes, silk velvet lined with silk. One of them is about 1890 and still perfect. These dresses and capes get out once a year but I will have them forever. I don’t wear them together, different eras obviously. But I’ve worn the dark navy opera cape with a red Ghost satin dress and it looks really modern.

My grandmother left me her gloves and some Liberty scarves. So I’ve got about ten pairs of silk lined suede or leather gloves in bright colours. Luckily she had the same size hands as me. One of the last pairs she bought was a red leather Cornelia James pair from the 1980’s, they’re an amazing rich tomato red and they go with so many of my clothes.

So I get my desire for quality from my grandmother, plus how to look after it. I think if she saw my wardrobe now she’d approve, even of all the trainers as her ‘trainers’ back then were leather brogues so she definitely preferred comfort over high heels.

Fabulous post @LaurieFairyCake

And Bunty’s Cut-Out Wardrobe! I can’t remember which poster reminded me of that but thank you!

Thank you for starting this thread @DeHumanaeMentisApatheia. It's really fascinating

@EleanorMc67

I was obsessed with the sound of the words, as much as the look & feel of the fabric! Watered silk ... devoré velvet ... organdie ... gauze ... charmeuse ...!! So evocative, even if I didn't always know what they meant. Oh, & chiffon ... a word that's meant to be whispered!!

Love this!

I really relate to those whose body dictates style to some extent! I am quite jealous of people who don't have this issue.

For me it's a little bit about "flattering" but only in as much as that I'm muscly with decent aerobic fitness but as a tall "mid size" hourglass, if I don't emphasise some of my smaller bits, I look unfit and this bothers me because I put time into fitness.

But the rest of it is simply that stuff literally does not fit unless it can accommodate boobs, shoulders and a very high up waist. My trousers come from a depressingly limited array of shops and are usually too short because I don't have any options with length when I'm so constrained by needing extremely high rise.

Unfortunately the magpie in me loves print and colour whilst another part of me is drawn to androgyny despite having the least androgynous body.

So no discernable style really but I love clothes and try to include at least one thing that brings me joy.

i was born in 1950.late df was disabled, no sickness benefit. A lot of clothes came from jumble sales. I had a fabulous German sewing machine,made all my clothes including a coat..My df mum was stylish,made all her own clothes as well. 5.2 so have always had to shorten everything..I did have my colours done,it was a day course, delighted to discover I was a summer and was already wearing most of the correct colours. Blue eyed blond lots of white in the front. I have a few "pieces" over 40 years old. Beige trench mac, cashmere jacket,LK Bennet suit, channel style. long dress. For the last few years, dictated by health. Vulval excema dictated white cotton pants only, and no tight leggings,jeggins. Hiatus hernia, goodbye anything tight or fitted, plus bending down to put on shoes. 2 years ago bcc removed from chest in the winter, couldn't have clothes touching it. Had to wear t shirts and v neck jumpers or cardigans. Frozen shoulders meant I couldn't do a back facing bra up. Hiatus hernia means the bra comes off indoors.

I only developed issues with my body after I read Trinny and Susannah and realised I had about a dozen ‘defects’. For a while I followed their advice to the letter but quite honestly it was a low point for me style wise. The incessant negativity about my thighs, arms, jawline etc etc really got to me and I’m so glad I snapped out of it. I realise a lot of posters find it helpful but that was my experience of dressing for your shape and there’s no way I ever want to go back there.

Oh, these wonderful grandmothers! Some of you were truly blessed.

I’m not a grandmother (I would have been the impatient type threatening crochet hook attack!) but I wonder if my generation of older relatives will be the last to pass on any knowledge of, and love for, all the ‘old fashioned’ fabrics not sold in athleisure stores. I imagine if human beings are permitted continued existence as a species beyond 2036 we’ll all be in wearable tech - exoskeletal body suits designed to keep us physically healthy for our prescribed number of years …

I imagine if human beings are permitted continued existence as a species beyond 2036 we’ll all be in wearable tech - exoskeletal body suits designed to keep us physically healthy for our prescribed number of years …

Someone clever should get out in front of designing those. Phoebe Philo, perhaps...

I think that it's a variety of factors. My mother allowed us to choose our own outfits from as soon as we could express opinions, as it made it easier for her, but on looking back, we had, er, unusual style choices! While my sibling is now a very fashionable person, I prefer the smart-casual look. I like the vintage look (1950's or thereabouts), so if I'm not in work, I'll wear clothes like that. However, I do rule out heels, as I find them uncomfortable! I am quite small but broad around the back and hips, and I have heaving bosoms, which rules out some clothes.

I don't follow influencers, but I think that knowing my own mind and what I like and feel comfortable wearing is much more important than anything else.

Plantain I totally get that. In theory I’d love to wear oversized clothing top and bottom but I’m 5ft 4 and a very short waisted hourglass shaped size 10-12 so the line between oversized and just sloppy can be difficult. But I don’t let my body shape be the main thing which dictates my clothing choices. I’ll wear clothes that aren’t conventionally flattering and sometimes won’t highlight my waist even though it makes me look bigger. Baby steps! I do think it’s easier to say ignore your body shape if you are tall with broad shoulders and a straighter body shape.

This is an interesting thread.
I dress to be comfortable, I don't like stiff or very structured or poor quality clothing.
I also like softer colours, nothing bright.
After that I dress to try to flatter my shape.

Like @PlantainArama I have a high waist, so it’s less about style and more about what I can actually wear if I’m to avoid discomfort (and very bad camel-toe!). My ideal would be Grace Kelly, but I had to accept some years ago that I’m not that shape. I stick to simple plain tops, no breast pockets, no frills because of the boobs but even a plain T-shirt can look like a bag with two melons in (and yes, I do buy good supportive bras) so I use scarves quite a lot to break up the frontage.

Just turning back to the polyester debate, I don’t like pure polyester blouses, but I’m actually more comfortable in synthetic knitwear, I find wool much too itchy, even cashmere. It doesn’t make me sweat, but then I’m generally not a sweaty person.

This such a great thread!

Interesting thread.
When younger I dressed to conform and liked dresses, think Laura Ashley in the 70’s.
With small children I dressed for practically and to hide my problem areas.
Now I am passed caring what other people like so my choices are based on being a pear with a pronounced hip dip, having very wide feet and bunions and having a chronic condition which means I feel the cold and get severe Raynauds attacks. Beyond that I prefer to spend on natural materials, to spend on ethical brands and to make use of sales and discounts. I have become more involved in different art mediums and this has influenced my colour and design choices, mid century colours and prints are my go to.

For me, it’s probably been a mix of friends, work, and just figuring out what actually feels like “me” over time. I used to be much more influenced by trends, but these days I’m way more likely to buy something because I know I’ll wear it loads. Quality, comfort and whether it works with the rest of my wardrobe matter way more now tbh.

As I remember, the seamstresses in my family were pragmatic about the arrival of synthetics. They might not have liked them but they knew how long it took to get clothes dry then. Different times of course but it’s easy now to forget that ‘drip dry’ was once a game changer.

There’s a lovely photo of me as a child in a short crimplene dress made by my mother. 😅 It was very Mary Quant in shape. There definitely were synthetics in my childhood - particularly the anoraks ordered from a catalogue.

With two full time working adults some compromises had to be made - though I distinctly remember my father looking very glum when my mother insisted he stop buying beautiful white shirts with separate stiff collars - they just required too much maintenance.