Oldest Pieces in My Collection
For me, one of the most exciting things about fashion and style is making it your own. The best way to do this is to create your own rules!!!! By doing this you don’t have to worry about wearing the most up-to-date pieces or keeping up with trends. You can invest in pieces YOU love, that will be worn time and again. I have bags and shoes in my collection from waaaaay back in 2003. Not all of them are in the best condition (and could definitely do with a spruce up) but because I fell in love with them when I made the purchase, I still love them! Even though my style has changed from when I was 17 (I dress more like a teenager now than I did when I was 17 haha) Those pieces mean something to me so and were looked after and well-loved!
One of these pieces from 2003 is a pair of Tom Ford for Gucci black formal shoes which cost me £235. I mean could you imagine being able to buy Gucci for that price these days? Now my idea of formal has changed MAAAASSSIVELY from when I was a young ‘un, and I probably wouldn’t buy them now, but they were the first item I bought from the designer that I loved so much; I used to be OBSESSED with the dangerously luxe aesthetic that showed the embodiment of sexual confidence that the Tom Ford era brought to the Gucci Group. I used to find the campaigns each season to be just as exciting as the catwalk and they really helped sell me the fantasy. I bought the shoes the first time I went to London, which was for my 18th birthday, and I dragged my family AAAALL over the city looking for them……. and eventually ended up buying them from the Sloane Street Gucci store. I remember they were agony to wear, and they didn’t get much action for quite a while after their first trip out, but because I loved them so much I persevered and ended up wearing them pretty much every day for work (I used to have to wear a suit when I worked at Swarovski) and even to sixth form (how boujie haha).
Another item from waaaay back is this Gucci Monogram canvas messenger bag. Now I have always loved the look of a Monogram canvas, even though the colours aren’t something I wear a lot of, but the idea of having more than one piece is VERY ‘new money‘/Lil Kim 2001 Notorious K.I.M era………. which I OBVIOUSLY live for! I got this bag from Cruise (the sister store to Flannels) in the summer of 2004 for £190. I searched the Gucci site to find a similar bag to see how much it would cost today and the closest I could find was £660. To look at it now you wouldn’t think it’s 16 years old. I mean there are a few issues with it, such as scuffs around the corners, slight discolouring from the leather tab on the surrounding canvas and the lining has come away, but this actually happened a few months after I got it and I wore it every day to work and couldn’t possibly be without it while it was being repaired. I used to LOVE to wear this bag with a Gucci Monogram Leather belt. I used to think it was the $h1t wearing the two together. This belt was from Harvey Nichols in Edinburgh for a meer £95. I did have a look at the Gucci website and saw that you can still buy pretty much the same belt but it now costs a whooping £355!!!!! You see……. it pays to keep a hold of your stuff! I was obviously a LITTLE slimmer when I was 17 years old and the holes where you fasten the belt have seen better days. I used to wear this belt around my hips on the smallest notch and now it fits around my waist on the biggest size LOL, never mind, it’s still a keeper.
One of the most used pieces from back in the day is a Gucci Monogram canvas waist bag. This bag used to be EVERYWHERE and was insanely popular, no doubt helped by the character Carrier Bradshaw from Sex and the City donning one in the series. I picked this one up from Flannels when I moved to university in Birmingham in the autumn of 2005 and I am sure I only paid £255 for it (I did think it was only £200 and I didn’t realise until I got home and checked the receipt………… not that I cared of course haha. This bag has been USED beyond belief! I used to take it on every night out at uni (which was at least 3 times a week in my first year before the workload got too heavy) so I am extremely shocked that it is still useable today and only shows a few signs of wear for its age. I have cleaned it up quite a bit, I gave it a scrub down with a canvas cleaner and I had to glue the leather strip that hangs over the zip because the leather had separated, but other than that it is still good to go minus a rip in the fabric, but turning the bag to the side hides this pretty well.
Another well-used piece is a brown Saffiano Leather Prada Holdall bag. This was a steal at £275. I snapped this up with 50% off in the 2005 Christmas sale from Flannels in Birmingham. This bag was used every day to carry my stuff to uni for the 3 years I was there, it even ventured on the odd unplanned nights out and still came back in one piece. For the past 9 years, this bag had been sat up in my Mam’s loft collecting dust. Recently I ventured up to collect it and I decided to bring it back to life. Sadly, the bag was missing its padlock and the zip pully on the main opening had come off. I managed to unscrew the pully from the inside zip and put it on the outer zip. I googled the best way to bring back to life a leather bag and I found that a few coats of bee’s wax rubbed into the leather really did the job. This really helped the leather come back to life and stopped it feeling like brittle plastic. The bag does still have a few marks on it, which looks like it could be white paint, but I don’t think it takes too much away from the bag considering its age. I was actually shocked that the leather luggage tag was still attached and in one piece. Sooooo……. I had a quick look on the Prada website and found the closest bag to this was a Saffiano Leather Tote and it costs a whooping £2,950, which would have been almost 6 times the cost of the full price of the bag I bought 16 years ago.
There are a few more pieces I still have but sadly I can not fit into them anymore as I am not a slim as I was 17 years ago LOL. One-piece I loved was a pair of YSL Rive Gauche white bootcut trousers……….. YES, you read that correctly, BOOTCUT LOL. That is another reason they didn’t appear in this blog LOL. Except for the white YSL trousers, it really does go to show that if you buy what you love and create your own rules you can have longevity in your pieces, even if you have to give them a tiny bit of TLC every few years after being stored away which will actually cost a fraction of the price of a new piece today and if you don’t use or wear them anymore get them on a site such as www.vestiairecollective.com, sell them and put the money towards a new investment piece as I am sure the cost will continue to rise.
Puffer Coat - ZARA
T-shirt - ASOS
Jeans - ASOS
Shoes - ZARA
All vintage:
Messenger Bag - Gucci - Cruise
Waist Bag - Gucci - Flannels
Belt - Gucci - Harvey Nichols
Holdall Bag - Prada - Flannels