RACHEL CLOTHES

BY ANNA BURNSIDE Charity gets shops’ surplus stock and makes sure women in need get fashion

they’d want to wear instead of well meaning donations crawled back to her parents’ home in Ross-shire.

She said: “They helped get me through. I was still being pursued by my former partner. He was booking flights in my name, contacting my parents, telling them he was coming to get me. I was so traumatised, I had PTSD. It took me several months to get into a fit state to see what the next step might be.”

Rachel also had a support worker at Ross-shire Women’s Aid.

In a room filled with bin bags, they talked through the practicalities of dealing with a threatening man in a different country.

After a few sessions, Rachel asked her about the bin bags. It turned out they were full of donated clothes. Used, out of fashion, sometimes fusty old outfits that might have been stored in someone’s attic.

These were all they had to offer women who arrived on their doorsteps with nothing but the clothes they had on.

Rachel was horrified. She said: “Donations like these are very well meaning but they are not going to be what women would choose to wear. They might not meet their religious or cultural needs. And they’re handed over in a bin bag.

“The bag is the symbol of rubbish. If someone hands you a black sack of somebody else’s old clothes, how is that meant to make you feel good about