Name calling

It’s not trendy to say ‘trendy’. Saying ‘fashionable’ hasn’t been for some time.

‘On trend’. That’s what you say now. Amazing what you can pick up reading old copies of Heat magazine in a doctor’s surgery.

My background is as a copywriter. But I’m still impressed – stunned, sometimes – by the power words can have on the perception of a thing. They can change its value utterly. Even though the thing itself hasn’t changed at all.

Asking your donors to come up with the ideas for you, that used to be called ‘being lazy’.

Now, depending on whether you do it by focus group or by putting a prize-incentivised brief online, the on trend phrase to use is either ‘co-creation’ or ‘crowd-sourcing’.

But as I flicked through that dog-eared Heat (honestly, I didn't buy it), I was struck by how one of the words they use has had a recent effect on charities.

Because nowadays, according to fashion, old clothes aren't 'second-hand'. 

They're 'vintage'.

Which means they’re suddenly more valuable. So more people are choosing to sell them on eBay or to small ‘boutiques’.

Which may be why so many charities are despairing of a dearth of donated clothes to sell in their shops.