Charity shopping can be a creepy experience, but one that is completely worth enduring for the amazing oddities that can be found. For starters there's the smells...a combined mesh of odours from the donations (like when you mix all the paint colours together and it makes brown). Then there's the anonymous crusts of god knows what on the jumpers, the horrible local radio station, the shoppers who get jealous when you find something and think the rail you're browsing has all the anwsers so push you out of the way to look (this happens A LOT).
Today I decided to go charity shopping down a street near where I live which has 3 or 4 really decent charity shops. I wore my creepers...they are actually faux creepers picked up on the high street for cheap. But I'm broke more often than not...so they'll do. I like the ugly donkey brown colour and the thick sole/pointed toe which gives them an unflatteing/clumsy feel which I really enjoy. Teamed with cigarette pants and black 'school' socks, I felt sufficently creepy and hit the charity shops. I was NOT dissapointed, finding tons of great stuff for dirty cheap, this included...
-An amazing red stitched waistcoat from the 70's (£1)
-An electric blue wool full length granny coat (£3)
-A hand knitted cardi (£1)
and I also really enjoyed bantering with the dears who worked there...thanks, creepy charity shops. I love you.
It's amazing how you can spot something and see it in a completely different light and take it out of that environment and suddenly all us mere mortals can see how amazing it can look! It's like you have your very own brand of "underwear" goggles on...
ReplyDeleteYou can have my goggles x
ReplyDeleteThe most ugly/beautiful shoes I've seen! I didn't know they are called "creepers", where does that come from? I miss your artsncraftsmovement floor. x
ReplyDelete'They found their beginnings in the years following World War II, as soldiers based in the deserts in North Africa wore suede boots with hardwearing crepe soles because of the climate and environment. Having left the army, many of these ex-soldiers found their way to the nightspots of London wearing the same crepe-soled shoes and these became known as "brothel creepers"
ReplyDeleteIn the late 1950s, these shoes were taken up by the Teddy Boys along with drainpipe trousers, draped jackets, bolo ties, quiff and pompadour haircuts, and velvet or electric blue clothes. This style of shoe was developed in 1949 by George Cox and marketed under the "Hamilton" name, based on George Cox Jr.'s middle name.
The brothel creeper regained popularity in the early 1970s when Malcolm McLaren sold them from his "Let it Rock" shop in London's Kings Road. Teddy Boys were the obvious customers, but the brothel creeper still proved to be popular among regular customers when McLaren and his partner Vivienne Westwood changed the shop to more rocker-oriented fashion.
The shoe has since been adopted by subcultures such as indie, ska, punk, new wavers, psychobilly, greasers and goth, Japanese Visual Kei, and was noted as the footwear of choice of Bananarama'
-Wikipedia
A brief history of the creeper.