These are difficult times for everyone. Such uncertainty and a concensus that we have arrived at the end of the period of plenty with shopping as a competitive sport. The recreational approach to our buying decisions [honed to a fine art over the past decade] is well and truely a thing of the past as we tighten collective belts and dig in for a Winter of austerity and attonement. The clammy hand of Calvanism hovers over our every retail encounter ... and some of us are trying to sell clothes here and still LOVE pretty things!
And yet [to state the obvious] things could be so, so much worse. Is it really so awful to re introduce a moral element to the way we approach spending? Our culture has embraced shopping, taken the spoils briefly to its bosom before chucking them aside to shop again. Cheap clothing on a high street or website near you has so altered the way we buy. The concept of longing and longing for something, saving and saving for it before [possibly] possessing and TREASURING it has been deeply absent for a long time now. The idea of fewer but better loved posessions is pretty appealing. The very opposite of the 'get it before it goes' mindset, a calmer, more measured approach.
Here at Tulip & Nettle we are concentrating less on volume and more on quality. A little more hand finishing, beautifully fitted cotton lawn linings, an exquisite lace trim. We can't produce bargain basement clothes here in England and we don't want to. We believe that machinists should be properly paid for their highly skilled work. We don't want our pleasures to be produced out of other people's exploitation or pain and actually now, in this chilly new climate, we don't want things we are going to throw away. The idea of clothes being cherished and handed down from one child to another is way more satisfactory. Maybe something to celebrate.
