[mobertol]

Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington

I think that some people do not have the luxury of the choice of expensive clothes....and have to buy whatever their budget will allow.

School clothes - uniform for instance, can be very expensive and even when you pay the top price the quality still isn't so crash hot.
Also children grow so quickly. My daughter bought her little girl some school skirts just as the school holidays began,thinking she would save time and effort during what was to be a busy time for her........only to find the skirts are too short, because her daughter has had a growth spurt - must be the sun and sea air.

I don't know about Italy, but it is difficult to buy clothes that are made in the EU...everything seems to come from China.
I bought myself a pair of M&S sandals - not cheap - found they had been made in Vietnam.

People's expectations have changed undoubtedly -I remember mum sponging my school clothes down from one day to the next if I marked them, my god-daughter would be horrified at the idea and changes for school every day! I had one change of uniform -mum knit the cardigans herself and made a lot of my & my sisters clothes by hand and she worked full-time as a teacher.

Many people now spend less on the basics to have more of life's luxuries -mentalities have shifted. Back to my mum -who was neither a Saint or a Martyr -she cooked a full meal for the family every evening. These days so many spend a fortune on ready made meals and take-aways because they don't have time...Time is what you make of it, as a rule families are better off now than they were in the 70's -the priorities have changed-in many cases not for the better -but them I'm an old fuddy-duddy and walk round with rose-tinted specs most of the time