DESIGNER WARDROBE BARGAIN BUDGET!

With a closet full of designer labels, Sarah Kingham, 44, pays pence for her purchases

- KATY MEANEY, FIONA FORD

Reaching for the dark camel coat hanging on the clothes rail, I felt a ripple of excitement. Looking at the label, I couldn’t believe what I’d found – a beautiful Chloe trench coat that would cost hundreds of pounds to buy new, but was just £6 in this charity shop.

‘It’s my size!’ I squealed to my mum, 77.

‘I’ve always said that’s the beauty of charity shops, you never know what bargains you’ll find,’ she said.

It was June 2012 and after years of Mum trying to convince me to give charity shops a try, I’d finally agreed. She’d always been a fan of second-hand shops, but as a fashion-conscious teen in the 1990s, I worried kids at school would tease me for wearing second-hand clothes, so rarely joined her.

CHANGING TIMES

When I married Dave in 2005, I was still happy shopping in high-street stores but after having our three children, two boys and a daughter, I noticed a shift in attitudes. Second-hand clothes were no longer considered dusty and unwanted. Now they were ‘pre-loved’. Add to that the shift away from fast fashion, and society becoming more conscious of the impact on the environment, I knew that it was time to rethink my attitude of always buying new. So when Mum suggested yet again that I look around the charity shops in my home town of Chelmsford, I agreed to give it a try.