WI LIfe February 2016 19

Knickers, model’s own!

A tribute to her mum turned into a major campaign when Caroline Jones decided

to celebrate their love of fashionInterview by Kaye McIntosh Photography Pete sChIazza

Make-up Chloe hIsKett

18 WI LIfe February 2016

Caroline Jones’s attempt to raise money for charity has burst through every target she set: going from £500, £1,000, £5,000, £10,000 to £30,000, and reaching nearly £50,000

last month... all thanks to a Facebook page called Knickers Model’s Own.

She had no idea how things would explode when she decided to try to raise a few hundred pounds in memory of her mother, Mary, who died of breast cancer in October 2014.

‘It was New Year’s Eve. I’d just dropped the family off at friends and said I wanted to be on my own for an hour or so. I had this desire to go into the New Year feeling brighter, to channel myself.’

Within an hour she’d set up JustGiving and Facebook pages. The idea was to wear a different outfit every day for a year, from clothes bought in Cancer Research UK shops (apart from undies, hence the name – a play on the captions on magazine fashion pages).

But after just six days, a journalist saw her post and interviewed her for the BBC website. The reaction was stunning: ‘The Facebook likes were click, click, click, click, click. The adrenaline was pumping, my heart was racing. It jumped to 15,000, then 20,000 likes so quickly,’ says Caroline. ‘By the end of the first week I’d had 97,000 visits to my page.’

Something that started as a way to remember her mum had turned into a campaign with thousands of supporters and national media coverage. She’s appeared on

BBC1’s The One Show, ITV’s Loose Women and in The Guardian.

Clothes had been an important part of the bond between mother and daughter, ever since Caroline was small in the 1970s. She recalls trips to department stores such as Browns of Chester or Tyrrell & Green in Southampton.

‘I felt it was an amazing environment. She’d be looking at clothes and I’d be hiding between the racks, making dens with my brother,’ says Caroline. Perhaps that’s why she has a thing about ‘golf club labels’ such as Alexon, Jacques Vert and Planet. ‘They are beautifully manufactured. I wouldn’t have looked at them when they were first out but now there is something classic about them.’

But there has to be a twist. ‘If you do go down the vintage route you can’t go fancy dress. Put a modern spin on it.’ As we talk, she’s wearing a stylish Betty Barclay corduroy maroon dress teamed with contemporary make-up, earrings and nail polish.

Back in the 1980s, it wasn’t friends that Caroline took on trips to Chelsea Girl and Topshop, but her mum. ‘She never criticised, she was always positive – she gave me carte blanche and allowed me to be experimental.’

When Mary developed breast cancer and became too ill to volunteer in her local charity shop in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, Caroline took on her shifts. You can still find the working mother of three (a shopping channel

Caroline's fashion flair shows through as she models a wide variety of outfits from Cancer Research UK charity shops – a different one every day of the year – all in the same good cause

When Caroline set up a Facebook page to raise money for Cancer Research UK in honour of her mother, Mary, the response was overwhelming

Visit www.cruk.org to find out more about Cancer Research UK's campaign to beat cancer sooner

20 WI LIfe February 2016

TV presenter) there on Friday mornings. ‘I’ve always felt a great connection with that shop and I was very lucky, they allowed me to go into the window and dress the mannequins.

‘I loved it and had a good reaction so that was something positive. Mum would always comment on the windows and a lot of pleasure came from that shared love of style.’

But wearing a different outfit every day – from a random collection of second-hand clothes – must be time-consuming. How does it affect family life (husband Rod, daughters, Mary, aged 12 – named after Caroline’s mother – Connie, 10, and Matthew, eight.)

‘It’s massively impactful. We went on holiday and my pre-loved wardrobe came with me, for a whole fortnight. It’s a headache, Sundays, Saturdays, days when I’m feeling under the weather, it is non-stop. I have set myself high standards so the picture has to look great – it can’t be done in seconds.’ When everyone else is ready to go, Caroline isn’t: ‘You have to wait half an hour for me. “I’m not quite ready to leave the house yet, hang on!”

‘They’ve been very tolerant,’ she says, especially as, by November, her ‘wardrobe’ was taking over the house – including the sitting room and her son Matthew’s bedroom. The collection was sold at a charity fashion show (with shop volunteers modelling – showing that women of all ages can look stylish) but when we speak a month later it’s already ‘creeping back’.

She has to source an entire outfit from the charity shop. Her shoes are all second-hand, accessories, jewellery – she even finds unopened packets of tights.

Caroline sometimes teams a ‘pre-loved’ outfit with new footless tights or trainers, but it’s always made clear in the captions. When you buy from charity shops you aren’t restricted to vintage, she points out.

‘People get rid of brand-new things – often with tags still on. I think sometimes clothes

stay in the wardrobe, the moment has passed and there’s no time to take it back. Or maybe you thought you’d get into it and you can’t, or it was just a bad mistake.’

But isn’t the chance of finding something new, or a designer label, higher in wealthy places like commuter-belt Hertfordshire, I ask? You aren’t going to find lots of Dior in the average town are you? She disagrees. ‘You probably only have to travel five to 10 miles to find a good selection of charity shops, while it may be 20 miles to reach a department store.’

In the last year, Caroline visited Chester, Manchester, London, Liverpool and Peterborough, and found something interesting in each. ‘Wherever I am I pop

in and have a look. You have to keep your eyes open.’ Her best buy was ‘a lovely knitted cardigan with a vibrant orange shoelace running through the waistband that came from the Vivienne

Westwood Anglomania collection’. But, Caroline insists, ‘if that cardigan

was Clockhouse [from defunct high street store C&A] I would still wear it. I have been to Cancer Research UK shops and found a beautiful Escada jacket tucked in among less designer-y labels. You never know what’s going to be there. That’s the excitement. It’s like a game of cat and mouse.’

But popping in occasionally and grabbing a bargain doesn’t feel like making a big effort to support a good cause, I suggest. ‘For charity shops to survive they need people to be buying. But it can be easier to get them to donate – it’s a stock balance issue. Where I live there are a huge number of donations but not enough volunteers or buyers.’

We speak when the campaign’s still running. What about when it’s over – won’t that be painful? ‘I haven’t let myself think about that,’

she says, ‘but I’m not the sort of person to sit down and twiddle my thumbs. There will be more things coming.’

She’d ‘like to stay connected’ to Cancer Research UK and will carry on wearing some second-hand. She’s also keen to push style for more mature shoppers. ‘I’m 47 and I really want to show people that you can still rock it in your 40s. I’m looking forward to being in my 50s, 60s and onwards. My grandmothers looked amazing when I was growing up.’

One of the important things about Caroline’s year of wearing second-hand is that it shows how important clothes can be – emotionally as well as economically. You can’t dismiss fashion, she says. ‘It’s a serious business, a multi-million pound

industry.’ But it’s more than that – something that’s helped her carry on despite the deep pain of losing someone so crucially important.

‘There’s two parts of me – the private side that my close friends and family know about, that’s dealing with the grief that hasn’t gone away. Then there’s the public side, the Knickers Model’s Own campaign.

‘Early on I didn’t want to present myself looking sad in front of the camera. There are days when it’s been hard to take a picture, but it’s a mind-over-matter thing. Whatever you are doing, whether a run or a climb, for a week, a month or a year, all challenges are hard.

‘I set myself a very high bar for a year, but I don’t look back and regret it. I’m really proud of what I’ve done. It reminds me of Mum in a positive way because she’d be looking on Facebook and Twitter and commenting. She’d love it and that keeps me going.’

Mum would always comment on the shop windows I dressed. A

lot of pleasure came from that shared love of style

What does the WI mean to you?

Caroline’s grandmothers were both in the WI: ‘It’s part of my childhood.’ one was a farmer’s wife in Cheshire. ‘I didn’t know exactly what went on at meetings but I imagined it was the equivalent of a men’s social club. My other grandmother was a teacher, a great speaker, very artistic and involved with her WI in ellesmere Port, Cheshire. I’m very proud they had that connection and I’m interested in getting involved myself. I will join!’

Left: with her keen eye for a bargain, Caroline chooses clothes and accessories to ring the changes each dayBelow: make-up artist Chloe Hiskett works with Caroline at our shoot