Mary Queen of Charity Shops
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
I really enjoyed watching Mary Queen of Shops last night, when Mary had the unenviable task of sprucing up a charity shop in Orpington Kent. Not only was I interested to see the challenges that Mary faced trying to apply her vast skills and experience of high end retail to charity retail with a team of dedicated volunteers to manage through the change process, but I was also really pleased to see that second hand clothes were being valued and not labelled as just a load of old rubbish. Mary has helped to change the perception of many people to buying second hand clothes in charity shops. The thought of getting a Jimmy Choo handbag at a fraction of it’s original price is bound to see fashionistas flocking to their local charity shops.
I loved the way that she change the look of the charity to shop to give the feeling of a vibrant market place and made sure that the clothes were sold at their real value. Even the fact that charity shops were chosen as a subject for the programme shows the growing interest in second hand and vintage clothes in the fashion world. When Mary said that charity shops had untapped potential she is only saying what many second hand and vintage enthusiasts have been thinking for years. Buy jazzing up charity shops (and I hope many more will follow suit), she may be pushing up the prices of second hand clothes but more importantly, she is opeing up charity shop shopping to a whole new group of shoppers, who are not serious rummagers but like their clothes to be arranged neatly in size order.
picture from bbc.co.uk
