Caroline's charity shop challenge 'feels joyous' this time around

BBC News

20-04-2025

A woman wearing charity clothes for a year, a decade after she took on the challenge for the first time, is hoping the changes she has experienced give hope to others who are in a "difficult place".Caroline Jones, 56, from Harpenden, Hertfordshire, began Knickers Model's Own in 2015 to raise money for Cancer Research UK while in the early stages of grieving for her mother, Mary Benson.She wore clothes from the charity's shops for 365 days and posted her outfits on social media.This year, she is posting her 2025 pictures alongside the corresponding 2015 images, and she said her grief "feels lighter" and she was generally "more confident".
Mrs Benson, who died from breast cancer in October 2014, had been a volunteer at the charity's Harpenden shop for 13 years, so Ms Jones decided on a year-long campaign to honour her memory.Naming the challenge to reflect that only her underwear was new, she hoped to raise £1,000, but her daily posts became so popular she raised about £70,000.About four months into her latest challenge she said she hoped she could show others going through difficult times that things did change.
"[This time] it feels joyous," she said."My grief is much lighter and being 10 years older I feel more confident. I do feel more accepting of who I am, what I look like... hopefully that inner confidence shines through in my photographs."She said that previously she was "hiding a lot behind my eyewear, behind my hair", and added: "I think that was probably me not wanting to be in front of a camera, thinking 'Am I good enough?' I was harder on myself back then."Now, because I feel lighter in myself, I feel like I'm doing this for women to just look at themselves in their mid-50s and say, 'We are still interested in fashion, we belong, we are here'."
What Ms Jones is finding hardest is looking back at the 10-year-old images."I can see my raw grief in those early photographs, my tears never far from the surface," she said."I was a mother with young children and I was grieving and had a lot on my plate."I remember how I felt vividly, whether it was a good, bad or really bad day, and I can really remember every single emotion, so that's sometimes been difficult."But when I have difficult moments, I always think about my mum. She's always there in the back of my mind and this is why I'm doing it."
Ms Jones said she was also seeing different people in charity shops and having different conversations."It's wonderful to see that younger generation, 25 and younger," she said."I've definitely noticed [that age] probably weren't shopping there 10 years ago."With so much now available online, she is having more conversations to champion the "bricks and mortar" charity shop."You make your best decisions when you're holding something and trying it on," she said."Fashion is not downloadable – you can't touch it through a screen."
A decade on from the first time around, Ms Jones said the joy of physically finding an item in a charity shop remained the same and that it was not about what was "on trend" but about "the item in the corner that no one else is looking at"."It's very freeing wearing second hand. It gives you total carte blanche to do what you want."
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