Charity Shops
By Lois Price
St Paul said that there abide faith, hope and charity - but I have more hope than faith in the charity shop as a source for transvestites' clothing...
The Charity Shop
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.
I think that there are three main reasons for people giving clothes to charity shops - they're worn out, they no longer fit or they were a mistake from the start. To take the last of those first - if it looked ghastly on the woman who originally owned it, it will probably look even worse on you. On the whole, transvestites need to take more care over what they wear than women do. I, for one, am not crossdressing to wear someone else's discarded horrors.
A quick glance with a critical eye will be enough to assess the ghastliness of a lot of clothes. Sometimes, though it's necessary to try the clothes on to see how awful they are. There are garments which seem fine in theory but in practice, just don't work. There are clothes which could be splendid, but they're cut so that they don't hang right on a human body. If they hang badly on a woman, they're likely to hang a whole lot worse on you. The cut of clothes can offend a lot more than the eye. I have a friend who picked up a teddy from a charity shop. Exceptionally, it was large enough for a transvestite's body - and it was certainly very pretty. The snag appeared when putting it on for the first time. It was decorated with piping which cut into the flesh in some extremely sensitive places. The original owner had probably found it too painful to wear, but I think it must have been even worse for my friend!
Acceptable
Less painful, but still a pain, are problems around washing and ironing. There are clothes which are a lot of work to keep in half way acceptable shape. There's no reason why transvestites shouldn't iron their clothes - all the same, if someone took a garment to a charity shop because it was too much trouble to iron, it probably really is too much trouble to iron. I've given clothes to charity shops for this reason - I'm sure that a lot of women have done the same.
Other pains include hand-wash only - how good are you at hand washing? Worse are problems around garments not being colour fast. I once bought a red skirt with an elasticated waistband from a charity shop. Its original owner had removed the washing instructions, so I decided (as I thought) to play safe. I hand washed it, with a few other things, in tepid water. The skirt came out fine. Everything else emerged mottled with pink. It ruined some expensive undies.
More extreme than hand-wash only is dry clean only. Charity shop items in that category generally cost more to clean than to buy. Something which looked to be a real bargain turns out a bit expensive. Washing and ironing are compounded by the fact that a lot of charity shop clothes are without manufacturers' labels. Some of these may be home made, but in others one came to see where the labels have been ripped off. Why anyone should do this I do not know, but it leaves care of the garment as a lottery in which there are only booby prizes.
Wrong guessing can ruin not only the clothes without labels, but other things in the same wash. Instructions for washing and ironing are not the only label to be snipped out. Size labelling can also be missing. That allows three possibilities - carry a tape measure, try the garments on, or guess. Someone did once advise me to carry a tape measure as a matter of course. I've never done so, and don't know anyone who has. Even the friend who gave me the advice (a transvestite) doesn't do it.
Trying clothes on would be the ideal - but it takes an unusually bold transvestite to do so except in such safe outlets as Transformation. Not having attempted it, my guess is that a trannie wishing to try on women's clothing in a charity shop would meet with, at best, a frosty reception. It could well be worse than frosty. In fact, 'frosty' is an accurate word for the attitude of many assistants in charity shops towards men who bring women's clothes to the counter, let alone towards any male who wished to try them on!
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