‘I suppose it’s so attractive to dress for a fiver,” says Miquita Oliver. She appears to be like like 1,000,000 dollars in an off-the-shoulder ivory bustier high with a cappuccino-froth of feathers beneath the neckline, and blue denims that sit completely on her hips and graze the highest of her kitten heels. It's note-perfect supermodel-at-an-afterparty cosplay – “my 90s Kate Moss look”, she calls it – however till two days in the past, these garments have been buried among the many mountains of cast-offs at Oxfam’s Yorkshire warehouse.
Oliver – tv presenter, trend week front-row fixture and now Oxfam ambassador – is a brand new type of model icon, one who believes that secondhand garments usually are not simply higher for the planet (though they're) or extra inexpensive (ditto) however cooler – and sexier – than new garments. Not second finest for being secondhand, however extra joyful for being pre-loved. So strongly does she consider this, in truth, that as we speak she has taken up the problem of styling her mum, TV chef Andi Oliver, and her 84-year-old grandmother, Maria, in garments she discovered throughout a rummage by the Oxfam warehouse in Batley, to show that secondhand is for everybody.
Secondhand September, now in its fourth 12 months, is Oxfam’s annual marketing campaign difficult consumers to purchase solely secondhand garments for a month. With September problems with shiny magazines pushing new traits and the excessive road aglow with boxfresh traits, the month has historically been the high-water mark of trend-led, disposable trend – and nowhere extra so than within the UK, the place we purchase extra new garments per individual than anyplace else in Europe. It’s a behavior that presents a calamitous risk to the way forward for our planet. One new pair of denims is chargeable for an estimated 16.2kg of CO2, equal to driving 58 miles in a automotive.
The newest in a stellar line of Oxfam trend ambassadors who embody Sienna Miller and Michaela Coel, Oliver has crammed the rails of as we speak’s studio with Oxfam treasures. “How good is that this? And this!” she calls for in triumph as she thrusts outfits into the arms of her mum and grandma and sends them off to get modified. Liberated from its matching jacket, a teal slub-silk gown that was as soon as a part of a staid swimsuit, has change into an elegant celebration gown, teamed with a contrasting mule. (Within the pursuits of full disclosure, it doesn’t harm that Miquita has the reward of creating the whole lot she wears appear like couture.)
She holds up a baby-blue Adidas fitted T-shirt alongside a boxy pink miniskirt, and factors out a pink kitten heel from Hobbs: “This one is my ‘Bob Marley’s girlfriend’ look”. Andi pounces on essentially the most exuberant items with a magpie eye: a full circle skirt with jewel-toned ribbon trim is said “very Joni Mitchell”, an enormous hat is “Seventies Cannes movie competition, don’t you suppose?” Maria is extra reticent, appraising each bit on the rail slowly, noting the standard materials, the pristine situation. “It's laborious to consider what some individuals eliminate,” she says.
Maria has by no means achieved a photoshoot earlier than, however as quickly because the music is turned up she is a pure in entrance of the digicam. Within the custom of households in all places, the Olivers have landed on a playlist of classics. Sam Cooke’s Twistin’ the Night time Away is adopted by Al Inexperienced’s Take Me to the River, and Stevie Surprise’s For As soon as In My Life. Andi is big-hearted and beaming, flipping her skirts like a flamenco dancer whereas Maria clicks her fingers in a sleek, minimalist side-to-side shuffle. Miquita, willowy and slinky in her mini gown, appears to bridge her mum’s exuberance and her grandmother’s quiet self-possession.
Miquita, 38, has been on TV since she was 16, when she started presenting Channel 4’s cult Sunday morning popular culture present, Popworld, with Simon Amstell. Her model has developed right into a relaxed type of polish: she has all the time cherished a miniskirt, however she now groups it with a jacket or a neat sweater, reasonably than garish band T-shirt. She has an encyclopaedic data of trend references – a sweater is “very Celine 2012”, a gown is “Season 3 Carrie, falling within the pond when she’s stunned by Large” – and a lifelong love of secondhand purchasing which has crystallised, in recent times, right into a dedication to purchasing nearly solely secondhand garments. (She sometimes makes an exception for “a fancy shoe.”)
Nonetheless, as we speak’s shoot was a purchasing problem. “I wish to present that anybody can appear and feel stunning in secondhand garments. My mum is a 58-year-old bald black lady who's on prime-time tv, which is so inspiring to me. Lots of girls really feel like they aren’t seen – whether or not that’s girls over 50, black girls, girls who don’t use their hair as their magnificence – and so to see her develop her model as this joyous, celebratory factor has been banging.”
Miquita’s tactic, when she was rummaging by Oxfam baggage in search of garments for her mum, was to search for garments that felt proper of their form and temper. Working example: a white silk Jaeger full-skirted wrap gown – unworn, with the £399 price ticket nonetheless hooked up. “My mum likes to spin and twirl. She’s a exhibit! I knew that gown would work for my mum as a result of the second I noticed it, I considered her.”
Andi is the odd one out within the Oliver model triumvirate. “Very gaudy”, is her mum’s evaluation. “Glamorous. A little bit of a hussy,” teases her daughter, and the three of them scream with laughter, thick as thieves. Maria and Miquita, 46 years aside in age, have “a kinship”, Miquita says, in model. “We like a jumper, a strolling boot, trouser.” (Maria nods approvingly; Andi rolls her eyes in mock-despair.) Discovering garments for the senior Oliver matriarch was comparatively easy, as a result of “I used to be identical to, what's going to I wish to put on once I’m 80? However I needed to look intently at the whole lot – Nanny isn’t flamboyant like Mum, however she is cautious and regarded about what she wears. She sees the element, you recognize?”
Maria seems in a three-piece ensemble in ivory silk which contains a knee-length shift gown and matching collarless coat, with white-on-white flowers stitched into an extended, slender scarf which matches the floral trim of the coat. “That is my favorite look of the day,” she says. “Very elegant.” Miquita declares that after as we speak, she plans to have the gown shortened to mini size, ditch the coat, and put on the headband tied in her hair. Maria says nothing, however strokes the tissue-fine silk of the headband with a keenness that means her granddaughter might have a battle on her arms.
Maria Oliver grew up within the West Indies, with a mom who made all her garments. “She had six boys, then six women. With so many kids, she couldn’t afford to purchase new garments, however she knew learn how to sew,” says Maria. She tailor-made fits for the boys, made formal clothes for the ladies. (In household images, Miquita says, “It appears to be like like mini Armani and child Chanel.”) Maria moved to England aged 19, finally settling in Bury St Edmunds along with her husband to boost her household. Andi was 14 when, in 1978, the Conflict performed the city – a gig that resulted within the native council banning reside music from public venues for nearly 20 years. “I used to be like, OK! I get it! Now I perceive life. So I grew to become a punk.”
When she shaped the band Rip Rig + Panic, two years later along with her brother Sean and their pal Neneh Cherry, native charity outlets supplied the uncooked materials for his or her stage outfits. “We’d purchase old-lady-glamour issues and chop them up, or put on males’s jackets and jumpers as clothes, with belts. Being a punk was about freedom, it wasn’t about sporting security pins – though we have been garbage at stitching so discovering methods to maintain the garments in your physique when you’d reduce them up was positively a difficulty.” As soon as she purchased leopard-print carpet cloth and made a pair of trousers, shaving them with a razor to take the nap off. “These trousers have been wonderful,” she remembers with a nostalgic smile.
By the point Miquita was born, Andi was residing close to Portobello market in west London. “I used to be a single guardian, I didn’t have lot of cash. I purchased a combination of Ladybird garments from Woolworths and secondhand issues from the market. Portobello was unimaginable then, earlier than it acquired posh.” Nowadays she lives in Clapton, east London, “and the charity outlets are sensible. Though a number of locations are getting was espresso outlets, which is a little bit of a disgrace.”
Miquita grew up with little cash, made a load of it in her early 20s, misplaced all of it, and is now again on her ft and shopping for her first dwelling. Of her free-spending early 20s, she has mentioned that she “lived properly, ridiculously properly, however was only a bit too beneficiant.” She spent £20,000 on her twenty first birthday celebration, let her mates use her bank cards, and was declared bankrupt at 27 after failing to pay a £170,000 tax invoice. “However whether or not I’ve had cash or not, I’ve all the time most popular secondhand garments,” she says. “Once I was on Popworld the stylists would usher in Topshop or no matter, however I by no means felt nearly as good as I did in one thing I’d discovered on Portobello market.”
Generally, secondhand means discovering a designer-label cut price. For this shoot, she unearthed an immaculate Thierry Mugler skirt swimsuit and a pristine Burberry knit polo gown in preppy navy and white, however she’s probably not in search of designer names. “I don’t use the phrase classic,” she says, “as that makes it sounds costly. If you say ‘classic’ it sounds just like the doorways are closed in opposition to you. I wish to be like, I’m on TV sporting a skirt that value £2 in a charity store. That’s the place the enjoyment is.”
Maria is prepared for her subsequent closeup. She’s sporting a belted gown in a sunshine yellow floral. “I picked this one out myself,” she tells me. Miquita thinks it “very Proficient Mr Ripley”, however Andi spots a special type of trend reference. “Have you learnt, that gown jogs my memory of images of you in Antigua whenever you have been younger,” she says, and her mum’s face lights up. This 12 months, the Olivers have been reconnecting with their West Indian heritage, travelling to Antigua, Barbuda and Barbados for a two-part BBC Two collection, The Caribbean with Andi and Miquita.
Because the journey, Miquita has began interested by the roots of her personal model otherwise. “Like, as an illustration, I’ve all the time cherished a kitten heel. I feel they're stylish as fuck, and in addition I’m horrible at strolling in excessive heels. However then I went to the Caribbean and appeared round me and I used to be like, “Wait, that is mainly what my aunties wore.” A kitten heel with a neat pair of trousers, that’s mainly me. That’s the factor about model. It goes deeper than you realise.”
Secondhand September “shouldn’t be a lecture, or a check,” says Miquita. The trick to discovering nice garments in charity outlets, she says, is “to take heed to your intuition. Have an open thoughts and see what speaks to you. I’ll stroll into a store and a stripe will catch my eye, or the form of a collar. After a couple of instances it will get simpler to get in contact with what speaks to you. It is advisable to go searching and suppose: who am I? Which is an enormous query, clearly. Secondhand outlets are essentially the most enjoyable manner I do know to seek out out.”
Bag a cut price: 5 secondhand purchasing ideas from the Olivers
Don’t get hung up on measurement
“Suppose when it comes to form and reduce, reasonably than in search of your measurement”, says Miquita. Sizing varies between manufacturers and over time, so it’s a lot faster to scan the rack for shapes that give you the results you want – whether or not that’s tailor-made jackets, or floaty clothes – and slim it down from there.
Embrace alterations
Miquita swears by the tailoring and restore experience from the London alterations staff Make Nu. However for a easy job like making a skirt shorter, attempt your native dry cleaner for a fast repair.
Channel your internal magpie
“Don’t stroll in to the store considering you recognize precisely what you're in search of,” says Maria. “Be open to the color or texture that catches your eye.”
Take your time
Charity outlets can really feel underwhelming whenever you first stroll in. “Sluggish your self down, open your eyes and actually look,” says Miquita.
Don’t cease at garments
“I’ve purchased vases and shot glasses, tea units, a complete dinner service,” says Andi. “And you'll’t beat a secondhand e book in an previous version with an inscription within the entrance.”
Participate in Oxfam’s Second Hand September and assist shield our planet whereas freshening up your wardrobe
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