Shedding some light on Shed Couture

For those of you who follow my Facebook page you'll know this Summer I've been going through my garden shed, trying to thin it out, make it look like less stuff, asking myself if I didn’t remember what was in it, did I really need it? The answer is yes! I did throw some things out but the deeper I delved into the shed, dragging out sealed plastic boxes and looking through them, the more I realised I had a shed full of beautiful valuable clothes, long forgotten.... and too lovely not to share.

I grew up with a mother who said, ‘always buy good clothes when you you’re flush so you still look good when you’re broke’. I did sell and give away a lot of clothes over the years but some were just so gorgeous, so expensive and so emotionally linked with an era in my life, that I just couldn’t part with them. Also I gained weight and thought, maybe one day I’ll lose weight and wear these clothes again. And that’s exactly what happened - after years of patiently believing that being overweight couldn’t surely be my lot in life, menopause ended and I started eating normally again.

So I put the clothes on and took photographs for Facebook and Instagram to show that you don’t need to go out and buy more clothes – have a look in the back of your cupboard and you never know what you will find. The posts also show that well designed, well cut clothes don’t go out of fashion.

Alongside my mother I was also brought up by Vogue magazine in unflinching service to an impossible ideal that was completely arbitrary and would never be seen in NZ anyway. These days no-one has the cultural authority to dictate fashion. The name of the game is that there is no more name – everything is in and everything is out. There is one caveat though – try and wear clothes that actually suit you because looking good gives you a confidence you may not be feeling.

This is what you call asset management.

Peta