Inheritance Slacks | Generational Fashion

 I have a vast collection of clothing, accessories & jewellery inherited from family members and people I’ve known or known of throughout my life! Personal favourites include;

-A brown leather handbag my mum bought for starting her first serious job in the late ‘80s that was the perfect indie twee accessory throughout the 2010s and still has the most fantastic leather smell. 

-The denim vest that my teenage dad customised with band patches and a huge bleached crucifix with the words BLACK SABBATH written in - my favourite to wear to festivals and hugely sentimental, mainly because it’s never had a proper wash 

-A huge green handknitted cardigan my late gran made for herself and wore every winter - it’s the cosiest item ever, doesn't have a single piece of damage and feels like a hug from her every time I wear it 

These items are more than just fashion statements; they're a testament to the memories of my loved ones. They make me feel connected to my past and bring me comfort.

An item that has become a treasured part of my personal history since inheriting it is a white suit that originally belonged to my other gran. She wore it on holiday, which was a massive part of her life when she was younger, and it saw multiple bars and clubs alongside my papa, my late great aunt & uncle. They holidayed as a four and always seemed to me more like best friends than relatives; I felt fortunate to have an additional third bonus set of grandparents. 

My parents didn’t have the means to travel abroad when I was younger, and I didn’t go on a plane until I was 15 with a pal’s parents, so Benidorm bars seemed impossibly glamorous to me as a child. I loved looking at her photos, wearing white to show off her 0SPF carrot oil tan. 

The hoarding gene runs strong in my family, and I shared it with both of my grandmothers. When Christine (I’ll give her her real name from now on!) was forced to clear out the spare bedroom wardrobe due to lockdown boredom, she told me on the phone that I would probably have no interest in it as it was all old junk—that couldn’t be further from the truth. 

I inherited the white trouser suit and other sunshine-bright holiday clothes. It consists of straight-leg trousers that are ever so slightly tapered above the ankle and a long-line white blazer in a classic shape. The suit is originally from the late 80s/early 90s and is in amazing condition. 

I have a habit of holding onto outfits that feel too special to let go of, always fearing the perfect occasion will come up and I will be overwhelmed with regret. When I got engaged in July 2020, suddenly, I had so much reason to hold on to all those white clothes. The gals on TikTok called it a “wedding wardrobe,” and oh my god, did I have fun planning a host of different looks from different decades for the pre-wedding activities. 

Having recently become massively into replaying RDR2 and watching the Ken Burns country documentary, I was inspired to add baby blue fringing, which is very Orville Peck. 

My hen do was a complete surprise and organised by my bridesmaids. My sister was incredibly encouraging of the fringe and said I should add even more. She has excellent taste, though, so I didn't think anything of it. It turns out the theme of my hen do was cowboys. I had just custom-created the perfect outfit—I delivered the theme harder than half the Met Gala carpet without knowing the category. 

Christine was at the party and actually had at least five Bacardis for the first time in years. She couldn’t believe I was wearing her suit and took it as a compliment. She was so happy—although that may also have been the Bacardi. 

At an event about family, because weddings are indeed about family, I wore a statement piece representing resilience, family love and Benidorm party nights. 

That feels like the perfect journey for a single piece of clothing—hand-me-downs carry their own stories, but when worn in fresh ways by future generations, they have the potential to create new ones. This suit will always be a cherished keepsake filled with memories of my Gran and my hen night. 

I’m generally hugely sentimental about clothing, even when it didn’t previously belong to someone I love deeply. I love social history, and I love to know how people lived before I did—my job running a vintage clothing brand makes me feel so connected to people I have never met, who wore the garments years and years before I got my hands on them. 

I frequently repair items with damage to prevent good clothing from being unnecessarily sent to landfill. This regularly involves turning the clothing inside out and getting up close and personal with the seams. Sometimes, you find the most heartwarming things this way—I’ll never forget finding touching, personal baby blue embroidery inside a vintage 60s wedding dress. 

When you open a 70s dress, you’ll often find evidence of previous stitching, taking hems up and down or seams in and out—these tiny, barely visible ghosts of the different sisters, cousins, and friends who were lucky enough to wear the garment for a few years until the time came to pass it on Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants style. 

This can sometimes make me weep—not only because vintage clothing was manufactured with generous seam allowances to allow for this, meaning the clothing was less likely to rip, easier to repair, and wore much better than the corner-cutting, cost-cutting production techniques in fast fashion these days. 

YES, I am chronically sentimental, and YES, I do have a Pisces Moon, but I can’t help but picture a mother hunched over her Singer sewing machine late at night amending a chiffon floral number—thoughts racing with the passage of time, sending one daughter off to chase her dreams while the following ages out of her school uniform and into the gown she’s watched transform her much-admired older sister into Karen Carpenter every other weekend for the last two years. 

Gut-wrenching emotional narratives aside, these marks tell tales of sustainability, inventiveness and the thriftiness of previous generations. You can repair damaged clothing, replace buttons and add personal touches to any garment. Before making a purchase, you not only considered whether this was a worthwhile investment for yourself over the next few seasons - but you were mindful of the generations to come after you. How would they feel about the print? It would likely end up in their wardrobe once you had moved on to the next thing. 

These days, “thrift flips” are delicious TikTok content, and in decades prior, if you were determined to carve out your own identity and were armed only with a rack of your older cousin's clothes, you’d better figure out how to wear those in a radically different way and being handy with a needle and thread could make that possible. Necessity is the mother of invention, and turning a dress into a mini skirt and a cape to set your personal style apart creates a passion for the garment that is easy to lose in the days of endlessly available next-day delivery. 

I am seeing this start to change - I particularly love to see a try-on haul when it’s by a girl who’s just been up the loft to pull out a bag of her mum's 90s clubwear. The ever-growing fashion gatekeeping culture, the opposite of linked in bio, is made for hand-me-downs—no one can steal your look when you’ve stolen the look from your grandpa in the 60s. When the trend cycle averages 15 years until each sizable trend returns, sharing looks from generation to generation seems like a worthwhile investment and a way to set the family tree up for years of iconic fashion moments. 

When a minimum of 85% of clothing ends up in landfill, and only 1% of apparel is recycled into new garments, having a wardrobe peppered with sentimental, inherited pieces can only make you stop and think about whether something should be replaced and thrown away rather than worn again and again with love. 

The narratives within the fashion industry that sadden me include the wastefulness and the consumerism-driven frenzy of buying more cheaply made clothing at the expense of lives, the environment and our sense of personal style. Instead of cherishing the craftsmanship and artistry behind each garment, we often prioritise quantity over quality, leading to a culture of disposability. This perpetuates unethical labour practices and contributes to environmental degradation through excessive waste and overconsumption. As a result, fashion's value and beauty are overshadowed by a cycle of exploitation and disregard for both people and the planet. 

Inheriting generational fashion is in direct contradiction to this approach, which makes it a poignant antidote. When we inherit clothing through generations, we not only inherit fabric but also a connection, and we honour the labour and love that went into the production. It’s a conscious choice to reject the throwaway mentality and embrace a more meaningful and sustainable approach to fashion.