A top I bought ten or twelve years ago?

What’s the oldest things you’re wearing today?

It’s nylon and cotton. A maroon and white striped top. It has a couple of pockets. I bought it for work, I now wear it as something comfortable around the house.

Why not? I’ve lost weight, but it’s one of those baggy tops that doesn’t look bad even now. My thoughts are that I’m not bothered about fashion. If it fits and it looks OK I’m not bothered if its old. I don’t understand why people buy clothes every few months or weeks. I know people can get addicted to shopping. But in a time of austerity, why spend on clothes that might fall apart after a few washes. It’s also harmful to the environment to waste resources on clothes. If it covers you and keeps you warm? Then it’s OK.

I probably have older clothes, but I don’t remember when I bought them. They get washed on low temperatures, then folded and put away till I want them. Some are in a dusty cupboard, I might have some eighties classics!

Clothes sizes

I was talking to a friend about buying clothes and she said although she has lost weight she still thinks she’s a size twenty. She said the woman serving her said the clothes in the shop only go up to size eighteen. My friend was so embarrassed she decided to say she was buying for a friend. She tried on an eighteen and a sixteen and they both fit because she has lost weight. But I think the shop and its owners are missing a trick. The majority of women in the UK are over size sixteen. I think the fashion industry disenfranchises a lot of customers. They struggle to find affordable clothes that will fit. How many size ten to fourteen clothes remain unsold and go to landfill? If they sell ten percent of their clothes the rest will probably not be recycled. What a waste of resources and money.

Watches

A collection of watches, new and old. Broken straps, flat batteries. I’m thinking of using some of them in my college course. We have to create an artefact that will show our artistic practice. I can’t show you my ideas as it’s for the course only but I will discuss what I’m thinking about.

My idea is to re use old watches and clocks and repurpose them. A lot of the time (no pun intended), watches don’t have their batteries replaced or their wrist straps break, or they just go out of fashion. There must be old watches in drawers or cupboards all over the country.

My idea is to incorporate them into something else, so that they are useful again. It would mean trying to find watches that could be fixed or reconditioned and then fix them into the body of an object that can then be used a a decorative time piece.