Charity Shops

In Heaven, no doubt, charity shops are Aladdin's caves for transvestites. This world, alas, is a more cruel place. Buyer beware: rather than Aladdin's cave, here, charity shops are all too often little shops of horror.

By Lois Price

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Guessing

Size labelling brings us to the size of the original owner. An important point on this is that there's an overlap between the issues of clothes being ghastly and their no longer fitting the original owner. I married a woman who wore size 10 clothes. I saw her through the traumas of going up to size 12, then size 14, and on to size 16. She was concerned not only at her increasing girth, as such, but also by the fact that, with each increase in size, it became harder to find nice clothes.

The problem for us, here, is that not only does the male body tend to be larger than the female one, but it is differently proportioned. Men generally have thick waists, which increases their skirt size several notches. Probably worse, they also tend to have broad shoulders, which can have a dramatic effect on blouse and dress sizes.

Towards the end of our marriage, my wife was finding it difficult (at size 16) to find clothes she liked in ordinary dress shops and department stores. The task would be much more difficult for a transvestite who is more likely to need sizes up in the 20s. Someone I know, who doesn't seem an unusual size for a man - and certainly isn't fat - says that he takes a size 22. If flattering garments in that size are difficult to find in shops selling new clothes, they will be very much more so in a charity shop.

This brings us to the reason why clothes no longer fit women - and are given to charity shops. Generally, it has to do with the process through which my wife went. Women tend to grow larger as they grow older - acquiring matronly figures. The result is that there are plenty of size 10 and size 12 clothes in charity shops. The proportion of transvestites who can squeeze into these must be as tiny as their waists are.

In fact, probably the most frustrating thing about charity shops is that there are some lovely clothes going very cheaply in size 8 or 10. I've seen some really beautiful leather skirts available for a couple of pounds. Alas, all of them have been designed for anorexic teenage girls.

The most beautiful leather skirt I ever saw anywhere was in this category. It combined black and wine coloured leather sewn to form an applique pattern. It was in a Leyton charity shop. I don't know why I tortured myself by giving it a second glance, but I went so far as to gauge the size. It was hard to believe an adult human being could have a waist as small as that.

Much the same applied to a skirt of electric blue satin with a tulip hem. This wonderful creation was sighted in a Southend- on-Sea charity shop. I still think about that skirt. Even if I could have returned to my early teenage dimensions, I doubt if it would have been possible to squeeze into the tiny waistband. It would have been better if I'd never seen it. The likes of that skirt can offer me nothing but heartache.

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