Oxfam trades in its hand-me-down image

May 16 2008 by Valerie Hill, Liverpool Daily Post

IT’S so much a part of British folk culture that the Oxfam look is shorthand for a complete lifestyle.

This was part of the post-war, back-to-basics, waste-not want-not attitude to life for the middle classes.

The underlying message also signalled: “I’m too busy with really crucial matters to be bothered with anything so shallow as fashion.”

The word was green, but before anyone had heard the term. It was so anti-snobbery that its elitist adherents became snobbish themselves.

I suppose it was English style taken to its extreme: namely understatement so low that it practically disappeared, based on supreme self-confidence that what you looked like didn’t really matter.

The Liverpool-born playwright Peter Shaffer noted this and says: “We really like dowdiness in England. It’s absolutely incurable in us, I believe.” Needless to say, this didn’t and doesn’t appeal to me one jot. I’m relieved to learn that I wasn’t just being pernickety or difficult, but ahead of my time.

Now, like just about everything else, Oxfam, that mother of all charity shops, is undergoing an absolutely fabulous make-over to bring itself into line with the consumer capitalism that now dominates life.

A leading Oxfam shop in Wesbourne Grove, London, has ditched the dubious jumpers, cast-off crockery and dog-eared novels that nobody in a million years will ever read again, to go hip.

This is an Oxfam shop, but not as we know it, what we have is the Oxfam “boutique” flogging this season’s hot look, eco-chic. After Ikea tried to persuade us to chuck out our chintz, Oxfam now wants us to trade in the bric-a-brac habit for fair trade dresses and organic fibres.

But, more than that, they’ve engaged the London School of Fashion’s rising star designers to make an assault on our wardrobes. The idea is to boost sales by appealing to the fashion-conscious, while doing the time-honoured Oxfam exercise of fund-raising.

There are ambitions to be a thinking person’s Topshop, as that hugely successful chain’s former brand director, Jane Shepherdson, is a “creative consultant” on this project.

Sensibly, Ms Shepherdson thinks that ethical fashion has not taken hold of the mainstream.

“There is a core of people, that is probably growing, who are concerned and who would probably like it made easier to buy clothes with a clear conscience,” she says.

Not that all the old clobber has gone.

Donated clothing will be rebranded Loved for Longer, as it shares the shelves with approved ethical labels such as Penelope Tree and Amana.

In-crowd designers such as Giles Deacon, Stephen Jones and Christopher Kane have created objets d’art from bits and pieces they found in the old-style Oxfam shops. These will be auctioned on E-bay to help raise cash for the traditional good causes. You probably think that most of the new-look stock will cost more than the couple of quid we were used to paying for the old stuff.

Well, yes, Oxfam has gone from cheap and cheerful to just cheerful (until you see the prices). Dresses are traded for a fair £160 and shoes are a snip at £240.

As if that doesn’t turn on the fashionistas with a conscience, they will have the extra thrill of standing on reclaimed hospital flooring under low-energy light-bulbs.

This is a new high for low-emission lifestyles; the acceptable carbon footprint for the caring green-welly brigade.

Up to 25 of these Oxfam boutiques will open across the country within two years, says Sarah Farquhar, head of retail at the charity.

“We’re doing this to be inclusive,” says Ms Farquhar. I’m not sure what that means, but it seems to be about trading in old customers for a new type of Oxfam shopper.

Is this all really ecological? Will too much effluence – I mean affluence – come out of this revamped retail outlet? What about all the old shoppers being thrown on the retail scrap-heap?

“A lot of people didn’t shop in our shops because of all the stereotypes,” says Ms Farquharson. Presumably the stereotypes were piled on the old cardies so people couldn’t see them properly.

“We are seeing more people who choose to shop in Oxfam rather than who need to.”

Considering this point, Jane Shepherdson says that there is a trend towards the sustainable, rather than the cheap, throw-away fashion. “You do find in a recession that purchases are more considered, for things that last,” she says.

Let’s hope that Oxfam, which remains a well-meaning organisation, doesn’t fall between two stools – the old, chipped pine one and the glossy chrome new one.