An unconventional fashion blogger trying to find her place on the internet

As part of my No Buy November Challenge, I thought I’d pull out a couple of bits from my wardrobe that I’ve been meaning to fix or alter, but haven’t gotten around to. I’ll be honest, I couldn’t be bothered before but now I’m feeling the itch for buying some new clothes, the only way to scratch it was to make do and mend like they did in the old days!
I’ve got a book I picked up from the Imperial War Museum in Duxford when I was doing a project at college a while back that was titled “Make Do And Mend” that was in the form of a leaflet sent out to homes during World War Two when everything was rationed – it’s a great little read and gives some great tips for making do with what you have. I thought it an apt name for this post given the timing with Remembrance Day and 100 years since the end of the First World War. Obviously the whole sentiment behind the Make Do And Mend campaign wasn’t to mend frivolous fashion, but the same idea can be applied to our clothing today. As I’ve said in previous posts, imagine that you’re throwing away physical money when you’re chucking something out that you knew was a wasteful purchase – it starts to resonate that you’re being wasteful after a while.
I’ll try to do one of these posts a week for the whole of November and wanted to kick off with my green skirt that I picked up from Everything5Pounds.com where one of the buttons pinged off when I put in on one morning;

I wasn’t massively keen on the metallic buttons that were on this skirt anyway, one of the reasons being that they’re more likely to break off (which is exactly what happened), so this wasn’t such a bad thing to happen.
As soon as they pinged off in my morning rush to get ready and I had to pull everything out of my wardrobe to find a suitable replacement, I hopped onto Amazon and ordered some tortoiseshell buttons to change over (I always thought it would look better with them anyway!)
These subsequently sat in a drawer for the good part of three months until this weekend.

After unpicking and re-stitching on the new buttons, the skirt looks so much better and I finally got to wear it again! It’s also a perfect colour for autumn/winter, so I’ll be rocking it with some thick knit jumpers, chunky boots and all the layers.
For Sunday, I decided to go out in all black with it and love how it lifts the whole outfit.

Next up was a pair of navy blue trousers I got in a LessThan10Pounds.com haul earlier on this year. This was another easy fix as I just needed to take in the legs at the bottom that were a bit too saggy and take them up an inch and a half as I’m a short arse.

As you can see, everything is repaired and fits perfectly! All it took was about an hour of my time and I’ve got some more clothes I can wear, without feeling like I need to buy more – it’s a win win!
I’m not going to kid you all or myself that I’ll be the ultimate queen of not ever buying clothes again – I’m a lover of fashion after all – but I’m definitely going to be reducing the amount of shit I buy that’s a complete waste.
Let me know if you’d like some tutorials on small clothing repairs or alterations in the comments below and don’t forget to hit up your local seamstress if you can’t be bothered 😉

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