How did Lady M start her love affair with clothes?
Growing up on a small island called Bahrain in the Arabian Gulf from a young age posed many challenges for a fashion conscious girl. There were very few fashion shops just lots of tailors and thousands of beautiful fabrics to choose from in the wonderful #Souq. But as a teenager who is coming to terms with her new body shape and not knowing exactly what suits her - having items made by a tailor (most of whom were men) was a risk as you didn't really have the knowledge or confidence of what to choose style wise - only going from pictures in a magazine (mostly on stick thin models who look good in anything LOL). Once you managed to choose a design style you were then faced with the impossible decision on what type of fabric was best for the outfit to be made in and what colour. To that end my absolute disaster I will share with you is having a bib/braces/hotpants suit made up in bright orange crimplene!!! which I teemed up with some purple gladiator sandals OMG - I needed to learn a lot and quickly !!! hahahaha
After this disaster I decided to leave tailoring choices alone and instead just hung out in jeans and t-shirts even though my desire was to look super fashionable, relying instead of our once yearly holiday trips back to UK where I devoured every shop in the wonderful malls and spent hours trying on everything imaginable before piling my purchases into my suitcase for the journey back home, making sure that any labels (not allowed to be brought back into Bahrain i.e. Marks & Spencers due to the company's owners being Jewish) were carefully removed - Customs officers were quite often confiscate items of clothing for this reason!! So this is how it was for the next five years - pretty boring eh!
Things changed after I got married, living in my own home gave me the confidence to once again follow my love of clothes. However knowing I had a very limited budget made my choices even more limited as although Bahrain now had a few more fashion stores their prices were well out of my reach!!
One fortuitous evening at a dinner party, I met a fabulously dressed woman who shared my love of clothes and I couldn't help commenting on how wonderful she looked. After a few more wines, she took me to one side and told me that she got most of her purchases from the 'Gulf Air Thrift Shop'. Eager to know more I quizzed her on where I could find this place and what exactly it was. She explained that it was a recycled clothes store set up by the wives of #GulfAir pilots/staff who had created this shop whereby expats could sell their clothes with a percentage of the sale being kept by the Gulf Air volunteers to use for charitable causes in Bahrain. The shop was only open once a week on a Monday afternoon from 2 till 5 - and that my readers is how it all started.
OMG it was the most amazing place of clothes treasures I have ever encountered. The rails were brimming with all the latest designer clothes from Milan to London - because it was run by Gulf Air wives a lot of the Gulf Air Flight Attendants supported it and they would have the latest clothes due to travelling on a regular basis for work. The queue for the shop opening was fun in itself as we waited with anticipation as to what our spectacular finds would be this week and once the doors opened it was like the sale at Harrods!! I became one of the best dressed ladies in our social circle which consisted of friends from all walks of life - Bahrain being a very social and large expatriate community with many social functions to attend. Most expats were on very lucrative contracts and could afford to buy the designer labels at their in-store cost - however I was a young twenty something who was saving desperately for our first house who wanted to look a million dollars but without the price tag! The thrift shop was my saving grace as I obtained the most beautiful clothes but never paid a lot for them. That shop will always remain fondly in my memory as the place where it all began - although my husband may wish it hadn't LOL!!
You may be wonder if I ever did revisit having clothes made - well yes I did - about 7 years later when I really felt I knew what my style/colour palette was, I had a large number of raw silk evening suits and cocktail dresses made which I have to say were fabulous and complimented upon many times along with my copious number of thrift shop outfits. I had finally dispatched my cringe-worthy orange crimplene hot pants disaster and established that I really did have a good eye and portrayed a style that others aspired to.
The mantra that I aspire to now on a daily basis is a favourite quote by #Yves Saint Laurent that "Fashions fade, style is eternal".
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