Showing posts with label clothing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label clothing. Show all posts

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Good Things Come in Small(?) Packages: Woolgathering

What the heck?  Evidently you can not be too skinny, too, rich, or too wasteful?   Are ladies petite of size more supersized in trendy/spendy/wasteful habits than the medium-and-up general population of clothes-wearing ladies?  Many times while dumpster diving, I have found what seem like entire wardrobes of XS, S, P and 0- to 2-sized clothing relinquished to garbage cans. In one go, I find a volume equal to 2 big, black garbage bags or 5 or 6 brown paper grocery bags.  Sometimes just a few thing left on top of a garbage can.

Oddly, there have been very few M, L, or XL finds on my excursions in spite of the US having a typical size of 14.  Are these ladies more frugal or or those sizes more difficult to replace? Thrift stores have a more even distribution. A friend tried to donate her size 0 to 2 clothes and was gently rebuffed by a women's shelter as their need was for larger sizes. Clearance sale items in first-hand store tend to have lots of smaller sizes on clearance, not so much in the middle, and perhaps never had large sizes to start with. Few brick and mortar stores offer plus sized clothing--Lane Bryant and Torrid are two destinations I can think of, perhaps more choice of larger sizes online?

Before I had a teen daughter, I washed and dried (on a hot setting) these finds and offered them to my nieces and petite sisters-in-law. I donated to a food pantry that had a clothing distribution. Now my daughter has dresses, velvet gowns, coats and jackets for all seasons and occasions, cashmere sweaters (1 new with a tag that read $120), dresses and cardigans in all colors of the rainbow by
J Crew. A friend said that we must had rich neighbors and that she could never find things like that in her neighborhood.  We bask in the reflected affluence of our neighbors.  High rents and high prices to buy homes nearby.  But! I have also found things near her house too!  I just looked. She was right and she was wrong.

I'm reading/have read/about to read several books on related topics: Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash by Susan Strauser, very interesting and excellent, delicious writing about quilting, reusing, mending, brings to mind boro cloths; others: Where Am I Wearing: A Global Tour to the Countries, Factories, and People That Make Our Clothes; Where Did My Clothes Come From?; Clothing Poverty: The Hidden World of Fast Fashion and Secondhand Clothes.

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