Every Sequin Tells A Story

My history as a charity shop fashion queen

Alongside music, I’ve always been really obsessed by fashion and makeup.

I blame my Mum. She has never thrown away anything, and as a teenager with very little money I started raiding her wardrobe for some of the 70s treasures, including a brown velvet wide lapel jacket that I wore to school until the seams split. She was less happy about me breaking the block heel of her wedding shoes at my sixteenth birthday party - which was a 60s themed affair where I demanded everyone wear vintage clothing.

I used to bemoan the fact that my Mum didn’t like to throw anything away. But when it came to her wardrobe, I’m so glad she’s a hoarder. Back then, it was considered to be a little bit “chavvy” to wear second hand clothes (a term I had repeatedly hurled at me when I went to university at an almost institution that was at the time made up of almost 80% private school students and wore a cacophony of glitter and badly dyed hair). Most of the girls at my state school had even lusted after designer labels and branded sports wear and would look at me curiously when I wafted in to my GCSE exams in yet another vintage blouse procured form my Mum’s wardrobe.

Quite apart from me seeing it as another way to express myself creatively speaking, it was also a matter of money: we didn’t really have much and £10 would buy you a brand new outfit from the chazza. Many of which I still have to this day.

When I sang onstage with the Manics at the Q Awards in 2017 when they accepted their award I wore the same leopard print shirt I bought for £3 from the British Heart Foundation when I was 14. While I had stopped growing a year or so before that, and having not really changed size since - excluding my pregnancies - I’ve managed to accumulate a treasure trove of charity shop l finds and a few bone fide vintage pieces that I can return to year after year after year.

During the sixth form we no longer had to wear any form of uniform at my school and I took every opportunity to express my emergent queer identity through my clothing and apparel: trouser suits and slicked back hair might have seen me get the insult “dyke” hurled at me but I wore them like an armour against the vitriol and fear that accumulated at an all girls school where not being straight was an uncomfortable experience at best.

I’ve encountered different kinds of expectations around clothing in the music industry, often being told to wear a dress and let my fringe grow out to “look prettier”. One stylist on the set at a music video even forced me into a backless dress and heels for a two day shoot in a concrete wasteland. My uncomfortableness and vitriol seeps into the camera when ever I watch it back.

I vowed to myself that I would never let anyone dictate how I dressed again.

Pretty soon my penchant for trouser suits became instead my calling card and I sourced and styled all of my Simple Minds touring wardrobe myself, often making the budget stretch to three times the number of outfits that were expected by buying second hand.

The iconic gold suit that I wore for the filming of the Simple Minds Acoustic DVD cost me a mere £12 from eBay.

I took forward this approach to recycling and reviving reused fashion when I was invited to tour with the Manics this summer across a month long itinerary of outdoor shows. I knew that I wanted to wear something different every night and that I wanted to show that you could be glamorous while being ethically conscious about the true cost of throwaway fashion.

So I set about trawling for suits on Vinted and eBay, taking my time to source leopard print and sequin outfits that would be visually impactful while having minimum impact on the environment. What was most shocking in my search was that 90% of what I bought had never been worn. These were things that had been purchased and hung in the back of wardrobes, tags still intact. It made me think about the ease with which we consume things we don’t really need or want.

Mermaid Metallic Suit from Vinted. Cost: £19

I haven’t shopped on the high street now for years. I also rarely buy anything that isn’t for the stage. While I will always try and “double up” on a much loved outfit - cleaning isn’t always an option on tour so it’s a good idea to have duplicates of your stage wardrobe staples - I broke the habit of consuming fashion a long time ago.

I uses to live a stone’s throw from Oxford Street as a student and it was all too easy to find yourself drifting into impulse purchases on the walk back from college. The upside of having spent much of the last decade as a touring artist means that I’ve pared my wardrobe needs right down to stage wear and a core wardrobe of trusted essentials that go on rotation.

There’s something magical about opening up my wardrobe and being able to pull out a blouse that my Mum wore on her honeymoon or a vintage hand painted 1950s dress that I implausibly found one weekend in Camden Market. Every piece tells a story that is uniquely mine, rather than chasing some idea of what fashionable is.

Perhaps I have always danced to the beat of my own drum. If you’ve never been popular perhaps you don’t feel the same pull towards trends and being part of the crowd.

I hope others might find some inspiration from the fact that I managed to put together an entire touring wardrobe of 9 different outfits for an average of £20 each. Buying clothes second hand is not only a more ethical and sustainable choice bu also, in my experience, a more rewarding one. Who doesn’t love digging for buried treasure? And every sequin tells a story…

I had an amazing time touring with the Manic Street Preachers and Suede this summer. I’m giving away the pink sequin suit & sunglasses I wore onstage, along with a signed setlist + AAA pass to one lucky person on the mailing list.

If you’re reading this email then that means you are already on the list and will be automatically entered into the draw.

If you’d like to share it with someone else that you think would like to win the prize, simply get them to sign up to The Anchoress mailing list at theanchoress.co.uk to be in with a chance of winning.

The winner will be drawn at random on Sept 30th.

Good luck!