Sunday Reflections On Selling My Old Life

And sewing a new one

I’ve started to sell my old clothes. It took me quite a while to do this. I had bundled them all up into bags and into the loft back in 2019 and there they had sat for five years. I tried to sell them quite a few times over the years. When we moved here in 2021 and began clearing out the house I thought very seriously about it. But it was just too painful. Again in 2022 and 2023 I would question why I was keeping what could be hundreds of pounds worth of clothes in my loft. But I wasn’t brave enough to face it yet.

I have always loved fashion. It has always been my way of expressing myself. Once I was old enough to go into the nearby city of Liverpool on my own I was given a clothing allowance by my parents. This would come in monthly and I could spend it on whatever clothes I wanted. This is the time I really came into my own with fashion. I would love to say I was a thrifty girl buying all my clothes from charity shops and second hand. But sadly I was much more of a fast fashion girly. I would make my monthly trip into Liverpool with my clothing allowance and my pocket money combined and I would buy all the outfits and accessories I could from Primark.

I did sometimes supplement these with vintage finds and the odd charity shop bargain. But my style was predominantly fast fashion. I was young, I didn’t know much about the industry or what it was doing to the planet, and let’s be honest none of us really did back in 2010. But this was a great time of experimentation. I learnt to express myself. I learnt how to make even the cheapest clothes look classic and elegant and I did wear my fast fashion until it was falling apart.

Fast forward a few years and I began to learn about the horrors of the fast fashion industry. Almost over night I stopped buying from the high-street and began saving for Made in Britain brands and sustainable clothes from People Tree and Thought Clothing. By this point I was working and not earning very much. But I would scrimp and save and use all my birthday and Christmas money to buy clothes because it was my passion. Putting an outfit together brought me joy and it expressed a part of me I had no other way to express.

But then in 2018, I became chronically ill. Within six months my body had changed completely. I put weight on, I became very bloated and wearing certain clothes became quite painful and uncomfortable. The old Rachel, the one who would wear too tight shoes with painfully high heels because well, fashion, was gone. Instead she was replaced with an overweight, always in pain, struggling Rachel. One who had no energy or time for more discomfort. I was housebound a lot of my time and PJs or comfy joggers became my daily wear.