Plus-size Charity Shopping: A Chat with TikTok Star ‘alottameg’

Charity shopping can be a maze. Where to start, what to look for?

I sat down with TikToker and ex-charity shop worker @alottameg and chatted all things style, plus size charity shopping and how to get your start with shopping vintage and more sustainably.

My first question is, how would you describe your style?

I really don’t know. I mean, often, my quote unquote “haters” say that I look like I’ve just fallen into a pile of clothes and then walked out the house. And I feel like that is a good representation of what my style is. It’s very like mismatch, very maximalist, kind of on the side of clown core. I suppose, that kind of vibe. Like very maximalist, clown core, bit of Y2K vibes. Very Hannah Montana. Yeah. Very Hannah Montana, Raven Symone. That kind of vibe.

What first got you into vintage clothes and shopping for clothes in the charity shops?

So I grew up fat, so I never really cared about clothes at all because my family made me feel like there weren’t any clothes that could fit me, so there was no bothering to care about being into clothes. I mostly just dressed like an 11 year old boy up until I was about,
I want to say, like, 16. And then I kind of became a bit more confident in myself and almost out of spite, I started dressing a bit more out there.

And then I’ve always been into charity shopping because my nan always just took me charity shopping, but we just never really looked at the clothes, we always just looked at toys and stuff.

And so once I started getting my own money from like jobs and stuff, I went charity shopping and I found my first ever piece of clothing that really felt like me. And it was just like vintage crop top and then the fabric was like Hawaiian kind of style and it had these, like, they were either mermaids or there were women in bikinis, I don’t know, printed all over it, which is very funny because I wore that for a long time. staunchly under the impression that I wasn’t gay.

And that was kind of it really. And then I was really into vintage fashion. I don’t really know why I just was. I was really drawn to like, really old school patterns. I probably took a lot of inspo from my mum because she was a very rockabilly growing up.

And then, yeah, but, you know, when you’re plus size, it’s more, it was more difficult to find good stuff.  My wardrobe wasn’t as like interesting as it is now anyway.

To someone who’s just starting out with vintage shopping it’s just very overwhelming. Do you have any like tips or advice that could kind of make it a bit easier?

I think what you need to do is you need to figure out what it is that you’re looking for. You need to find your style or like, what you’re looking for specifically, like, if you’re into twee, or if you’re into Y2K. And the best thing to do is online at the moment, like, if you’re looking, you’re never going to find something specific on the high street in charity shops or in vintage shops unless you know what it is and you’re willing to, like, you’re willing to be overwhelmed and you’re willing to go through.

But just to get started, to kind of like figure it out: the best thing to do is decide what you’re looking for, like, you can use Pinterest, magazines, whatever, Google images to, like, figure out the main core pieces that you want, and then ask your grandma how she would describe it and use those key words on Vinted. That is the best way. Because like putting in like Y2K top isn’t going to come up with stuff, but if you put in, like, camisole on Vinted, that’s how you’re going to find the Y2K gems.

And like just asking like the older people in your life what they were wearing and, like, what brands they were wearing at the time, of the decade that you’re interested in specifically.

So you say a lot to kind of disregard sizing labels, and if you find something you’re like, just try it on. Can you explain this to me?

Yeah. So, especially with vintage, a lot of plus size vintage doesn’t exist anymore: not because there weren’t fat people back in the day, but because plus size people, and kind of everyone, they kept things until they were not wearable anymore. And the reason that tiny, tiny things are the only things that are left is because those things weren’t worn, and so they’ve been preserved, and that’s why they’re here now.

But sizes across the board, whether vintage and even in today’s standards of sizing, is all over the place. So there’s just no reason to worry about the sizing.

And also, depending on the cut and the fit and the way it’s supposed to fit you, things can be more in so many different ways, like skirts that are meant to sit on the hip I can wear around my waist and things like that. So let’s say you’re a size large, and you only ever focus on being on the size on the label that says large. 
You’re missing out on so much, because different materials can stretch. Things can be mislabelled, especially in charity shops. A large can be different in one country to the next. A large in Primark, for example, is much bigger than a large in Zara, or a medium in Primark is much bigger than a medium in Zara.

So like, there’s so much to play with and it’s silly to kind of limit yourself to a specific size, because it’s not real. Like, sizes are not a universal standard, so there’s no point worrying about it.

Okay, so say you go into a charity shop. Where is the first sort of section or first place that you go to? What’s the first thing you’re looking for?

That depends because all charity shops are are laid out very differently.

I mean, I would just go straight to the clothes, basically, like the tops, especially. My way of thinking doesn’t work for everything. Like, it’s highly unlikely that I’m going to fit into a pair of trousers that aren’t close to my size, but tops, you can always get away tops in all different kinds of sizes, maybe even dresses, maybe knitwear.

So like, I’m going to be honest, I barely ever bother looking at trousers in a charity shop. But you know, if you’re a straight-sized person or a mid-sized person, the world is your oyster.

It’s much harder as a plus sized person, but like, if you’re a mid-sized or straight-sized person, like, you could fit in so much in the charity shop, so it just seems wild to me that you wouldn’t consider looking at something that isn’t your size.

But tops are usually my priority in going in the charity shop. And accessories.

So are there any changes in thrifting or vintage spaces that like would increase size inclusivity?
Because I saw a TikTok that you did where a lot of vintage places kind of like cut up bigger T-shirts to make like a crop top and stuff like that.

Yeah, unfortunately, that is just because, as a society, like, fat people aren’t prioritised in any space, especially still not even in the fashion space.

So, like, often, if they do get bigger sizes, they end up being chopped up or upcycled and lots of people buy bigger sizes to upcycle or you know, slim people buy big stuff to wear baggy, that’s whatever.

But there are some charity shops that up until like recently, if they got anything over a size 20, they would rag it because they just didn’t think it was worth taking up space in their shop because they would prefer to cater to slim people because, even though the average size of the woman in the UK I think is a 16, they still think that plus size people are a minority and therefore not worth having time or space in their shops.

But the other thing is, when shopping vintage, there is this myth that there isn’t plus size vintage, but there is. There’s just not as much of it because women, plus size women, were more likely to hold on to their clothing for much longer until it was completely unusable anymore and only very, very skinny stuff survived because it wasn’t actually being worn.

Like when you saw these teeny tiny dresses, it’s not because women back then were really teeny tiny. It was because those dresses were never worn and that’s why they’re still here.

I know it’s hard, especially, like, as a fat woman, it’s hard to try things on and it’s hard to feel like nothing ever fits you and you have to try so much harder to find things. But charity shopping is.

It is work.
Like, you have to persevere, you have to be willing to go into shops all the time. You have to be willing to look through every single thing. You have to be be willing to try things on.
It is really hard.

Like, people like people are always like, oh, you always find so much stuff. And it’s like, yes, because I was working in a charity shop every day and then on my lunch breaks, I would go to the other charity shops. 
Like I was in charity shops every single day. Nothing could get past me.

And you have to be willing. It’s the same with on Vinted. Like Vinted is such a chore to go through, but you have to be willing to just do it. You just have to do it if you want to find the gems. It’s a real hunt.

Meg chats all things charity shopping and more on her TikTok @alottmeg as she continues to be unapologetically herself.