A whole new wardrobe

Sounds fun, right? Well, not always. Here's why: 

First of all there’s the reason. In my case I had gone up one size due to illness. In fact I was so ill that I first had to buy a lot of loungewear because I was still either in bed or on the sofa with a blanket. 

Going up one size also meant I had to say goodbye to all the lovely things I had collected over the years. At the same time age didn’t place the added kilos quite to my satisfaction! Another annoying experience. 

Then when I did have to leave the house, for appointments with doctors and specialists mostly, I often had to wear clothes that was too small, or some very unflattering panic bought loungewear. That lead to more panic buys. With reduced income in the family due to my illness, my clothes budget was limited, so panic buys that proved an error, felt very expensive. Good thing we learn from our mistakes, right?

What did I find?

Well, even loungewear is important. It’s not uplifting to anyone seeing a bag of potatoes walking past the mirror, not even a pink one! In sheer panic I had bought 6 t-shirts from Evans, that were totally shapeless! They looked alright on the model, but in real life they were a slight A-shape. An absolute disaster on my hourglass figure!

A purple version of the t-shirts from Evans

To be comfortable I bought lose fitting, wide-legged jersey trousers, not Evans this time though. However, not all jersey is a nice, soft cotton or viscose. Some is polyester, and some is a blend. Some of the materials I got were thin and clingy. Thin cotton shows everything, polyester gets static electric and clings. Some materials just don’t last very long. 

There's no telling from the photo how thin the material is

With my top of the body hidden in a pink bubble and every lump and bump showing on my thighs and legs I felt such a failure, spending good money on really bad clothing!

Was I ever going to wear anything nice again? Would I ever be able to go out of the door and not be ashamed of my dressing? 

The solutions

With my illness I also got extremely sensitive skin. It now becomes very irritated with heavier, rigid fabrics like denim and twill as well as fabric that contains wool or linen. Even cotton can be a problem unless it’s a high quality, and light weight. 

It seems the best trousers are ponte knit or heavier jersey in some blend of either viscose, cotton or polyester. With warmer weather I can do a tapered ankle grazing trouser that is everywhere at the moment. For colder months I do need full length. But no slim leg or skinny anything!

The very trousers I wore in my previous post (H&M)

For tops there’s really only a choice of t-shirts and knits. Shell tops rarely fit me properly, but more on that later. A lot of the t-shirts I bought were in 100% cotton, which my skin doesn’t respond that well to. Others were in 100% polyester. That proved to be fine with my skin, however the cheaper ones didn’t last very long and so weren’t worth the money. Viscose knits were like heaven on my skin, but too warm for summer, even this one - the coldest and wettest in 38 years or so!

Anyway, no matter the fabric, any t-shirt and other type of top, needs to be fitted! This is so important because I’ll be visually adding several pounds in a loose or relaxed fit. 

Colourful Viscose knit from Biba, £ 20 on sale

As it turned out the panic buys did teach me something, and so weren’t all waisted. But it did cost - money and tears!

Finally, a shot from May 2017. The joggers, t-shirt and kimono combo has now become my uniform

H&M joggers, M&S t-shirt, New Look kimono and Monies pendant

In the next few posts I'll show you the contents of my new wardrobe, and explain my strategy.

The very best weekend to all of you!