two stripey dresses

For similar reasons as I'm no fan of IKEA I'm not much of a fan of Swedish clothes designer Gudrun Sjödén. Although her prices are not of the super-cheap kind, it is very much a feeling of mass-production, the quality and homogeneity of sizing often do leave a lot to be desired. And many of the designs are not of my taste, a bit too... artistic, cultural funky 60+ ladies one might say.

But she's good with colours, really good. And when the quality and design is decent, it is really nice. The specific eco-labels I most often enjoy (but I really wonder about the reasons for the limited collection of such).

Oh, I could go into this a lot, the pros and cons, the devastating impact the textile industry in general has on the environment. Fairtrade and globalization, I know. We all know. And every time I go shopping I think about it. I do. Sometimes I just walk away, sometimes I deliberate with myself for a long time, sometimes I say no, sometimes I say yes, sometimes I go for it, wallet permitting.

But for now, it'll just be a post about the fact that I struck gold as far as bargains go yesterday. If the prices I paid for two awesome stripey dresses had been the original prices there were no way the person in the beginning of the production chain would have gotten paid a decent salary. But this time it was a left over price at Gudrun Sjödén HQ outlet - which was a really nice place to stroll, I'll give the brand that, the shops are always lovely decorated. Yesterday was my first visit, there may be more - I think these dresses sold for original price two years ago.

Knitted, cotton blend, both quite striking in different ways. I'm not comfortable to wear them simply as they are, but with a thin sweater, linen, shirt underneath, possibly trousers they do look great. The original sale price in itself was a steal, it turned out that was reduced with a further 30%. Since the black-white one lacked its belt I got it for a 50% reduction. Which meant a most reasonable price of 100 sek and 75 sek respectively. That is, ~15 usd and ~10 usd. It would have been a crime not to have bought them, right? Right.

They are lovely, both, wouldn't you agree?