Oxfam

Ah yeah, so this is THAT Oxfam. The one the TV show was about. Hmm. My mother always said ‘you can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear’. She has a quote for everything, that woman.
Well try as you might, with glossy shopfitting, colour coding and artful visual merchandising, it is much the same stock as any other store.
Just. you know, they’ve banned the granny volunteer to the back room and have some trendster working the till. I know, I saw an old lady take the trash out. With Tracy Chapman on the stereo, you are almost fooled.
Till you start shopping and the usual Topshop, H&M, Uniqlo dross is all you can see. It’s not Oxfam’s fault though, they do rely on donations and I applaud them for trying to make the ‘recycled fashion’ thing work.

I’m a big fan of wardrobe refashion but even shoppers who are not will like this store.
Oxfam does a good job of separating out donated items to improve our shopping experiences. Oxfam bookshops are a good example of this. This Oxfam boutique has gone one step further, not only selling clothes worthy of a fancy consignment shop. It also stocks refashioned items by fashion students and the occasional designer.
The best thing about this shop, though, is the way everything is presented. The manager knows a thing or two about merchandising. The store looks just as stylish as the other boutiques in the neighborhood. Purses and accessories are displayed artfully in glass cases. Clothes are categorised by type, size and colour. Most importantly, there’s a dressing room.

Not your typical Oxfam! The woman who revolutionized Topshop was brought in to revamp the Oxfam brand — and she’s started here in Notting Hill. No longer is this Oxfam: the dumpy and drab charity shop. No, this is Oxam: the *boutique.*
«Recycled fashion» takes center stage in this shop — donated garments that have been revamped and reworked by London College of Fashion students… maybe just a change in the seam, or maybe three shirts that have been transformed into a skirt — you just never know… but the concept they’re gunning for is to reinvent everything using the fabric of products that already exist.
This improved Oxfam is really trying to capitalize on the fact that people are concerned about being green and about shrinking fundage. They know that Londoners’ already have a passion for vintage and this is their attempt to get away from the non-​cool rubbish-​filled Oxfam stereotype — and from the rad things on offer at this Notting Hill outlet — I think it’s going to work.