2025 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

kiwisavings

Thanks for your feedback @PollyWollyDoodle. It sounds like this has had a major positive effect on your shopping and also that it is totally doable long-term

Sarahspangles

It’s a brilliant question @kiwisavings

I only recently found the Fashion on the Ration challenge, but have been following some capsule wardrobe ‘rules’ since 2016. I think it’s got me to a similar place. I use the same amount of clothes storage space as my grandmother had, down from more than double that. I think I have the right amount of clothes, because when I review my wardrobe more things go in the discard pile because they’re very worn, than are donated.

PollyWollyDoodle said:

there is no judgement on people buying new things, it’s really about thinking more before you buy and perhaps favouring quality over quantity. 

I was shocked how many coupons I used just to replace ‘basics’ in the sales, so I’m now browsing Vinted for more ephemeral items. I’ve got two items in my wardrobe that I bought for events that were so expensive that I’m struggling to let go, even though I don’t want to wear them again! There are similar lightly-worn items from quality brands on Vinted, so maybe I’ll let mine go on the basis it’s a ‘swap’.

diminua

I need to take some coupons off for an apron for an art course - technically it's a child's school art apron (aged 11-15 and purple to go with my purple art bag and so I know it's mine) so I make that 2 coupons. To offset my smugness, could someone get the tin down off the high shelf later? I want to put some of the chocolate my Auntie Mary sent me from Boston in.  We'll have a bit with a cup of tea first though. 

TBH it was actually more money than getting a standard size kitchen apron, but (to answer @kiwisavingsquestion as well) one thing that doing this challenge has stopped me doing is buying the cheap thing I'm not quite satisfied with, and then a slightly better one later on - it's just wasteful of coupons and resources and ultimately money as well. 

I've also bought a multipack of thick tights since I last posted (which I'm taking out of my forces tights allowance) and a packet of thick popsocks for which I surrendered another 3 coupons. I will be getting summer tights or popsocks later on. 

Laura_Elsewhere

kiwisavings said:

Hello everyone, I would like to ask the people who have been doing the Fashion on the Ration challenge for multiple years about how they have found it?
I'm coming into the challenge with a pretty well stocked wardrobe (including some new clothes I bought last year). Have you found that it has got more difficult as time has passed and most of your wardrobe was from previous years? Or has it changed how you look at your clothes and spending habits?

I think the first two or three years I went wildly over my coupon allowance each year- and the first two years I lost count several times and had to start again with the appropriate proportion of the year's coupons, but even so, it just all went a bit black-market!

It improved when I really thought about how and why I was buying, as well as what I was buying. I drifted from wearing quite a bit of old-fashioned quality stuff to actively seeking out quality stuff that lasts much longer. 

I'd second pretty much everything Polly said in her post above mine. And yes, I get compliments in the street and in shops from strangers Just on Wednesday last, the receptionist in the dentist's exclaimed about my hat and jacket, made over the holidays from leftover upholstery fabric a friend passed onto me and a teddybear-fur throw bought years ago and only a bit used for making a present and the rest hanging around taking up space stuffed into a huge bag.  

Nelliegrace

“Definitely a parachute.”

@Laura_Elsewhere, I enjoyed the episode of Foyle's War, They Fought in the Fields, where the Lumber Jill retrieved a German parachute, dyed the silk, and made it into dresses for herself and the two hard working, Land Army women at the farm. 

https://evelyn-dunbar.blogspot.com/2012/11/land-army-girls-going-to-bed-1943.html

https://www.stbarbe-museum.org.uk/whats-on/online-exhibitions/war-in-lymington-and-the-new-forest/the-womens-land-army/

We did a display of wedding dresses at church. I loved the stories the women told us. One woman received a wedding present in the 1940s, a small package from a relative in Malaya, labelled “Cotton Tea Towel,” so there was no import tax to pay. When she opened it there was a dress length of cream Thai Silk, enough for a wartime wedding dress. 

florianatwobob

I was in a vintage emporium yesterday with my sister and saw a pair of button waist band French knickers which reminded us of the parachute silk knickers my auntie made during WWII. 

Her button came unpopped one day and they slithered to the floor. She neatly stepped out of them and popped them in her handbag. 

Not sure how she acquired the silk but as the family lived near Aldershot she had a number of very casual boyfriends of various nationalities at the time). Her eventual husband (who was one of the boyfriends) was also teaching in the Parachute Regt at the time it may have ended up with her via a number of routes. 

Cherryfudge

kiwisavings said:

Hello everyone, I would like to ask the people who have been doing the Fashion on the Ration challenge for multiple years about how they have found it?
I'm coming into the challenge with a pretty well stocked wardrobe (including some new clothes I bought last year). Have you found that it has got more difficult as time has passed and most of your wardrobe was from previous years? Or has it changed how you look at your clothes and spending habits?

I've been here for a few years and had to think hard. My light bulb moment was probably before the challenge, when I decided not to buy more socks and knickers till I'd worn out some of the stash! After a year, I'd bought just a few irresistible ones (i.e. irresistible by my standards in those days) and hardly thrown any out. I came to realise that it's a long path to wearing things out, and all the longer if you have a lot of things. Socks and knickers were small treats to self when I wanted to have something to show for going shopping, but not spend a lot. Pyjamas and tee shirts also used to be bought more often than I do now. How often do I wear those out? Not a lot and comfy old tees can be worn under winter clothing or as PJ tops.

I've never spent large sums on clothes - generally haven't had it to spend - and I find mending is rewarding, so I don't have a baseline of high spending. I realised a coup[le of years ago that I was buying too much second hand, so last year I cut back, but bought one dress (not worn much but fills a wardrobe gap) and a few other bits.

I'm aware the challenge stops me filling up family Christmas stockings with default socks as they're a coupon a pair and the family has grown! 

As mentioned, I've too many clothes really, often bought second hand and I've enjoyed finding neglected items in the loft or back of the wardrobe, and new ways to wear them. I also accessorise a lot (enough scarves to turn a plain coat or jumper into many different looks). 

Sarahspangles

We had a visit to Bradford Industrial Museum yesterday, with sketching friends. One floor is dedicated to spinning and weaving. I understand the theory of taking the wool from fleece to cloth - I live in the ‘heavy woollens’ after all - but there are so many detailed steps when this is done on an industrial scale. One of my grandmothers  was an invisible mender in a mill and I finally understood how she would have been busy enough, just because the scale and pace of production was so large. I’m sure there were lots of detailed jobs for someone with nimble fingers. 

They have a cottage spinning wheel and treadle loom for demonstration to school children, but they’re dwarfed by the machinery. Most of it was in use until the early 70s, and there were some fascinating innovations including Listrakhan, which I remember ladies wearing for ‘best’ when I was growing up.

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1672101650/vintage-listrakhan-coatvintage

One of the most specialised printing machines was used to press wool fibre into shell casings. I’m not sure why they had to be wrapped up warm, I assume it was to prevent them being jostled! It was too cold to look at the back-to-backs (because I have a cold….) but they have set them out for Victorian, wartime and 1970s life. 

thriftwizard

I'm another with a tendency to suffer from Too Many Clothes! I'm an odd shape; top-heavy although the rest of me is quite petite, so clothes-shopping has never been something I did for fun. I could go around all the posh department stores & boutiques and find myself very frustrated, not having found anything that fitted or suited me no matter how much I could afford to spend. Then I'd pass a charity shop or vintage emporium & spot exactly what I wanted, for less than a tenth of what I'd been about to spend on something I didn't even like very much... As I've always been happy with secondhand/vintage, and am not very fond of clothes that restrict my movement too much - when everyone else was wearing shoulder pads, pencil skirts & stiletto heels, I'd be in a skirt I could stride in (with pockets!) lace-up almost-flat boots (ok, sometimes kitten-heeled) and a billowy blouse.Those days are long-gone now, but being able to move freely is still important to me.

So now I shop almost exclusively secondhand, have learnt how to make simple things (having been banned from the textiles studio at school, because I was destined to be "an academic") including knickers, and mend or alter the really good things that often come my way in a parlous state. It's very easy to end up with lots more than my one "wardrobe" rail & elderly chest of drawers can hold, so I can only acquire or hang onto clothes that will really earn their keep, something the challenge has helped me do; now I'm aware how best to fill in any gaps in my wardrobe & can spot when there actually isn't one, just temptation! I rarely win compliments in the everyday world, but often do in "vintage" or "handmade" circles where individual style is perhaps more acceptable. But fabric and to some extent yarn (though I can dye & spin my own, but usually don't leave myself enough time) are my downfall coupon-wise... thank heavens for the coupon-count to keep me on the straight & narrow!

PollyWollyDoodle

That’s a great story about the silk knickers, @florianatwobob!  

Some really interesting answers above, and yes, I’ve also been guilty of buying too much just because it was secondhand. But something @diminua said really resonates ‘(I’ve) stopped buying … the cheap thing I’m not really satisfied with’.  I think that’s been a real change for me, even buying secondhand I have to really love something before I’ll give it room in my wardrobe.  ‘It’ll do’ is no longer enough.