RAGE! CRUELTY TO CLOTHES!

You know me – I treat vintage finds like treasures, like a palaeontologist would treat a dinosaur bone. He wouldn’t chop 1/3 of it off so it could fit in this cool display case. I’d walk away from a pretty dress that would look great on me, only if I would chop off its over-frilled sleeves… some things are meant to be.

I’m fine with some enterprising people who take clothes that are either damaged, or so fugly, and give it a “make over” (pairing it with another sad piece, or with new materials, or vamping it up), and sell it for a higher price. Nothing wrong with that, and often, their re-styling is often quite well done. Pity most of them don’t flatter me – I’m on the lookout for a nice restyled vintage skirt my size.

However, today at Camberwell Market, the mecca for all vintage trawlers and gleaners, there was a stall that I stepped into. I picked out a dress, thinking “oh, what a nice ’80s dress… hang on, it’s really short. Really short.”

I looked at the size – it was 8, so I put it back, thinking it must be some of a throwback to the ’70s mod dresses, the kind that really encouraged men’s hairs to grow vibrantly over all squares of skin.

Looking down the rack, I glanced to the pair that was manning the stall – blondish hipsters (everywhere at the moment, infesting Camberwell market). Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against hipsters – who knows, I might be one myself – but sometimes their attachment to trends despite being “unmaterialistic” and “indie” leaves me rolling my eyes so hard my chin is pulled back like the tide.

Ooooh, what’s this? A gorgeous screen-print thick polyster dress! Beautiful colours – brilliant kingfisher blue, orange and yellow streaks, a little proper belt and… an extremely short hem.

Ok, that’s odd. This type of dress would be long and flowing, 80s again, not so short the bottom of your undies would flash while tram-hopping. I had a closer look at the short hem, and my ears started to ring a warning, and I saw red.

The fricking hem had been butchered. I don’t know how much they cut away, but probably at least a foot, a FOOT of this brilliant material, and to add insult to injury, they had bloody fucking machine-sewn the hem in a ’sealing’ sew like they would do to buttonholes!!!!!!!!! IN BLACK THREAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ON A BRILLIANT BLUE/ORANGE/YELLOW DRESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

&^%$#$%^&^%$#@!@#$#$!$%#@$#%!%$#@#$!

NO SEWING TECHNIQUES AT ALL. You’d think they would do the balantly obvious: use a BLUE thread, and fold up the hem, after doing a sealing stitch to stop it from fraying, and gently sew it around. They could have folded it up, so whoever brought it could have let it down, since it’s such a beautiful dress.

But NOOOOOOOOOOOOO. They wanted to TEAR it off so it looked COOL and RACY and HIP and FLASH (your underpants). AND THEY FRICKING USED BLACK THREAD. AND IT LOOKS LIKE THE WHOLE BOTTOM IS A BUTTONHOLE. FOR THEIR ASS.

Stepping back in shaking anger, I surveyed the rest of the dresses, and my heart leap into my throat as I saw the other poor, poor specimens: mutilated beyond repair. BEYOND REPAIR. That’s right, beautiful limited-edition dresses that were sold thirty years ago, damaged beyond repair. Might as well throw them in a mulcher. They not only chopped off the lengh on some dresses, they also chopped off the sleeves on some.

I hope that stall never sells anything and those two particular bloody idiotic hipsters give up on their so-called enterprise, stop mutilating clothes and ask their parents for money on some other one such as bead jewellery for bikes or feather-covered Van shoes. HISSSSSSS.