Article - Mary Queen of Charity Shops

 

Fashion queen and retail guru Mary Portas has never done shabby chic, but all that changes when she becomes Mary Queen of Charity Shops in her new BBC2 series. She tells GRAHAM KEAL of her battle to stem a tidal wave of tat and ‘moist things’.

 

Using long-handled tongs, retail guru Mary Portas holds out a pair of used ladies’ knickers plucked from a pile of charity shop rejects, and wafts them under the noses of appalled shoppers.

 

In a swish southern shopping mall, Mary has piled up some of the rubbish people have seen fit to pass on to local charity shops as donations – everything from the used knickers to a one-legged Barbie doll and battered rugby boots with the muddy pitch still attached.

 

“This is the sort of c*** you get at the end of a car boot sale,” says Mary, having earlier clasped an appalled hand over her mouth as charity shop volunteers sift through ‘donations’ that included trousers holed at the crutch, a terminally faded pink bra and even a baby’s nappy.

 

She has taken on the mantle of Mary Queen of Charity Shops to transform the way charity shops work, starting with one store, a shabby, underperforming Save The Children shop in Orpington, Kent.

 

“With the recession biting, charity shop sales should be sky-rocketing,” says Mary. “They have very real potential to offer good value fashion to people shopping on a budget.”

 

But it’s not happening, because folk still think they can give any old rubbish to charity shops – even though up to 75 per cent of donations go straight to the dump, with charity shops paying for the privilege.

 

I remind Mary of the moment in episode one when, joining backroom volunteers on her first day, she is warned to tip donated bin bags out on the floor to avoid syringes or anything “moist”, such as sanitary towels and even condoms:

 

“Oh stop it!” says Mary. “It was hideous. HIDEOUS! What is so shocking is that people actually make the effort to bring this to the shop! People were just donating the worst things, and the most difficult challenge was getting the standard of donations up to a decent level, making the volunteer staff believe that they could get a decent price for it, training them up to have at least basic retail principles, and improving the shop.

 

“You can’t put decent donations into a c*** shop. I had to change the way that people think, because they were still going ‘Oh yeah… I’ll just give the old sandwich tongs at the back of the cupboard, or the pyjamas that I’ve been wearing with the stain down the front.’ Horrible.”

 

It’s a very long way from the kind of retail offering that chic and cheerful Mary usually handles. She made her name revitalising posh department store Harvey Nicks, and her Yellowdoor consultancy does marketing for brands such as Louis Vuitton, Mulberry, Gossard and French Connection.

 

But after bringing boutiques and their owners back from the brink of bankruptcy in two hit series of Mary Queen of Shops, she faces an even tougher challenge.

 

Most people might assume that charity shops really weren’t Mary’s thing: “They never were. They were not places I ever went to, and that’s what I had to question myself about. ‘What am I doing? How can I change people’s shopping habits, make them think again.?’”

 

Before doing that, Mary, who turns 47 on Thursday (May 28), must win over her ragtag army of OAP volunteers, all 43 of them, some of whom had been doing things their own way for decades:

 

“They were nearly all great, but some were just a nightmare. One didn’t speak to me the whole time we were making the series (five months). They must have thought ‘This upstart! Coming in here…’ But most of them were just brilliant.”

 

The culture clash produces hilarious moments where Mary is stopped in her tracks by their reactions. She puts up a notice that bluntly reads: “Staff Meeting. Monday, 10am. All staff to attend.” An anonymous scribe adds Please !? underneath, to remind her to mind her manners.

 

When the pep-talk starts, helper June says they don’t like change: “If we don’t change,” retorts Mary, “we’re all going to be sitting here for another 40 years.”

 

“I won’t be,” pipes up Irene, 89. It makes for great telly, but did Mary learn to moderate her brusque manner accordingly:

 

“I did, yes of course I did. But I think probably what I had to moderate more than anything was my speed of work, because I was dealing with people with an average age of 78!”

 

After motivating the workers, Mary strides out with them into the Orpington suburbs to persuade people not to pass on the tat but to ‘Give with Love – something special that has meaning to you.’”

 

One punishing round of knocking on doors later, Mary assesses the value of what comes in – £54.50, and that’s assuming they sell it all. For once, the Portas magic wasn’t working:

 

“I was exhausted! You’re doing your day job, then you’re going up there and it’s winter, it’s cold, you’ve got the system to beat and they’re relying on you and it’s like ‘Oh God, it’s so depressing!’”

 

But Mary didn’t get where she is today by giving up after the first flop. She switches the focus to big business, addressing mass staff meetings at the big local employers and invoking a monthly D-Day – Donate Don’t Dump – to persuade employees to give up the good stuff they no longer wear:

 

“And the idea was for people to bring in things to make them ‘shopping neutral’ – if they were going shopping we asked them to think about giving something back, and that worked brilliantly.”

 

She even got the paparazzi snapping charity shop chic after recruiting celebrity waif Peaches Geldof and supermodel Erin O’Connor to flaunt donated fashions:

 

“They were brilliant! All the little grannies dressed them. But it was also about trying to re-educate consumers. They all have these style icons, but when the young kids are looking at celebrities and thinking ‘I want to get what they’re wearing’, the only way to re-educate them is to get the celebrities involved and get them to talk about the fact that they shop second-hand too.”

 

On the day of our chat Mary is wearing designer gear that you won’t find in a charity shop near you – leopard print trousers by Julie Verhoeven, a Todd Lynn jacket over a simple white T-shirt, and suede ankle boots by Robert Clergerie.

 

If her own gimlet eye for flattering fashion ever fails her, she can always seek advice from her partner. Having amicably divorced her husband of 13 years, Mary now shares her London home with another woman, Grazia magazine’s fashion features editor Melanie Rickey, 36, plus Mary’s teenage children Milo and Verity.

 

In both of our previous, mildly flirtatious encounters, I’ve optimistically asked if there was a man in her life. I was asking the wrong question:

 

“So it’s taken you this long to find that one out,” she laughs. “Yes, there is a woman in my life, and we’re still happily together – you get to see her in the show.”

 

And the kids? “The kids are gorgeous.”

 

With that she is off to the next interview, but I just have time to check whether se is practicing what she preaches:

 

“Yes I did buy stuff from the charity shop... I bought a wonderful green Viyella dress in a beautiful fabric. It’s about two sizes too big but I put a big belt on it. And I bought some beautiful tablecloths. I’ve been charity shopping again lately. I often go in now – it’s on my Horizon.”

 

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