Review: Mary Queen of Charity Shops

Over the last 5 months, Mary Portas has set out to change the way charity shops operate – namely to improve the quality of donations the shops receive in order to attract more customers and make more money each week for the charities. With a slogan of Donate: Don’t Dump, she went into large businesses (Google, EMAP, British Gas) to ask staff there to donate one or two quality items from their wardrobes that they no longer wear. And it worked. Many of the items she received were fabulous and far better quality than much of the stuff that can be picked up in shops such as Primark for a similar price.

There is nothing wrong with wearing secondhand clothing, you only have to look at anyone of the blogs listed in my style bar and I guarantee you that one or more item listed in that week’s outfit will be thrifted. Most vintage clothing is secondhand and fashionistas wouldn’t think twice about wearing that.

As we all know (because Gok has been telling us so for the past 8 weeks), most women wear just 20% of their wardrobe 80% of the time and so my challenge to you is to go home this evening and find a couple of items to donate to your local charity shop. And whilst you’re in there, have a browse around to see what other style mavens such as yourself have donated – you never know what you might find lurking on those rails!