1. WILife February 2016 19
Knickers,
model’s own!A tribute to her mum turned into a major
campaign when Caroline Jones decided
to celebrate their love of fashion
Interview by Kaye McIntosh Photography PEte SCHIazza
Make-up chloe hiskett
18 WILife February 2016
C
aroline Jones’s attempt to raise
money for charity has burst
through every target she set:
going from £500, £1,000,
£5,000, £10,000 to £30,000,
and reaching nearly £50,000
last month... all thanks to a Facebook page
called Knickers Model’s Own.
She had no idea how things would explode
when she decided to try to raise a few hundred
pounds in memory of her mother, Mary,
who died of breast cancer in October 2014.
‘It was New Year’s Eve. I’d just dropped
the family off at friends and said I wanted to
be on my own for an hour or so. I had this
desire to go into the New Year feeling brighter,
to channel myself.’
Within an hour she’d set up JustGiving
and Facebook pages. The idea was to wear
a different outfit every day for a year, from
clothes bought in Cancer Research UK shops
(apart from undies, hence the name – a play on
the captions on magazine fashion pages).
But after just six days, a journalist saw her
post and interviewed her for the BBC website.
The reaction was stunning: ‘The Facebook
likes were click, click, click, click, click. The
adrenaline was pumping, my heart was racing.
It jumped to 15,000, then 20,000 likes so
quickly,’ says Caroline. ‘By the end of the first
week I’d had 97,000 visits to my page.’
Something that started as a way to
remember her mum had turned into a
campaign with thousands of supporters and
national media coverage. She’s appeared on
BBC1’s The One Show,
ITV’s Loose Women and
in The Guardian.
Clothes had been an
important part of the bond
between mother and daughter,
ever since Caroline was small in the
1970s. She recalls trips to department
stores such as Browns of Chester or Tyrrell
& Green in Southampton.
‘I felt it was an amazing environment. She’d
be looking at clothes and I’d be hiding between
the racks, making dens with my brother,’
says Caroline. Perhaps that’s why she has a
thing about ‘golf club labels’ such as Alexon,
Jacques Vert and Planet. ‘They are beautifully
manufactured. I wouldn’t have looked at them
when they were first out but now there is
something classic about them.’
But there has to be a twist. ‘If you do go
down the vintage route you can’t go fancy
dress. Put a modern spin on it.’ As we talk,
she’s wearing a stylish Betty Barclay corduroy
maroon dress teamed with contemporary
make-up, earrings and nail polish.
Back in the 1980s, it wasn’t friends that
Caroline took on trips to Chelsea Girl and
Topshop, but her mum. ‘She never criticised,
she was always positive – she gave me carte
blanche and allowed me to be experimental.’
When Mary developed breast cancer and
became too ill to volunteer in her local charity
shop in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, Caroline
took on her shifts. You can still find the
working mother of three (a shopping channel
Caroline's fashion
flair shows through
as she models a wide
variety of outfits
from Cancer Research
UK charity shops – a
different one every
day of the year – all in
the same good cause
When Caroline set
up a Facebook page
to raise money for
Cancer Research
UK in honour of
her mother, Mary,
the response was
overwhelming
Visit www.cruk.org to find out more
about Cancer Research UK's
campaign to beat cancer sooner

2. 20 WILife February 2016
TV presenter) there on Friday mornings. ‘I’ve
always felt a great connection with that shop
and I was very lucky, they allowed me to go
into the window and dress the mannequins.
‘I loved it and had a good reaction so that
was something positive. Mum would always
comment on the windows and a lot of pleasure
came from that shared love of style.’
But wearing a different outfit every day
– from a random collection of second-hand
clothes – must be time-consuming. How does
it affect family life (husband Rod, daughters,
Mary, aged 12 – named after Caroline’s
mother – Connie, 10, and Matthew, eight.)
‘It’s massively impactful. We went on
holiday and my pre-loved wardrobe came
with me, for a whole fortnight. It’s a headache,
Sundays, Saturdays, days when I’m feeling
under the weather, it is non-stop. I have set
myself high standards so the picture has to
look great – it can’t be done in seconds.’ When
everyone else is ready to go, Caroline isn’t:
‘You have to wait half an hour for me. “I’m not
quite ready to leave the house yet, hang on!”
‘They’ve been very tolerant,’ she says,
especially as, by November, her ‘wardrobe’ was
taking over the house – including the sitting
room and her son Matthew’s bedroom. The
collection was sold at a charity fashion show
(with shop volunteers modelling – showing
that women of
all ages can look
stylish) but when
we speak a month
later it’s already
‘creeping back’.
She has to
source an entire
outfit from the
charity shop.
Her shoes are
all second-
hand, accessories, jewellery – she even finds
unopened packets of tights.
Caroline sometimes teams a ‘pre-loved’
outfit with new footless tights or trainers,
but it’s always made clear in the captions.
When you buy from charity shops you aren’t
restricted to vintage, she points out.
‘People get rid of brand-new things – often
with tags still on. I think sometimes clothes
stay in the wardrobe, the moment has passed
and there’s no time to take it back. Or maybe
you thought you’d get into it and you can’t,
or it was just a bad mistake.’
But isn’t the chance of finding something
new, or a designer label, higher in wealthy
places like commuter-belt Hertfordshire, I
ask? You aren’t going to find lots of Dior in
the average town are you? She disagrees. ‘You
probably only have to travel five to 10 miles to
find a good selection of charity shops, while it
may be 20 miles to reach a department store.’
In the last year, Caroline visited Chester,
Manchester, London, Liverpool and
Peterborough, and found something
interesting in each. ‘Wherever I am I pop
in and have a
look. You have to
keep your eyes
open.’ Her best
buy was ‘a lovely
knitted cardigan
with a vibrant
orange shoelace
running through
the waistband
that came from
the Vivienne
Westwood Anglomania collection’.
But, Caroline insists, ‘if that cardigan
was Clockhouse [from defunct high street
store C&A] I would still wear it. I have been
to Cancer Research UK shops and found a
beautiful Escada jacket tucked in among less
designer-y labels. You never know what’s
going to be there. That’s the excitement.
It’s like a game of cat and mouse.’
But popping in occasionally and grabbing
a bargain doesn’t feel like making a big effort
to support a good cause, I suggest. ‘For
charity shops to survive they need people to
be buying. But it can be easier to get them to
donate – it’s a stock balance issue. Where I live
there are a huge number of donations but not
enough volunteers or buyers.’
We speak when the campaign’s still running.
What about when it’s over – won’t that be
painful? ‘I haven’t let myself think about that,’
she says, ‘but I’m not the sort of
person to sit down and twiddle
my thumbs. There will be more
things coming.’
She’d ‘like to stay connected’
to Cancer Research UK and will
carry on wearing some second-
hand. She’s also keen to push style
for more mature shoppers. ‘I’m 47
and I really want to show people
that you can still rock it in your
40s. I’m looking forward to being
in my 50s, 60s and onwards. My
grandmothers looked amazing
when I was growing up.’
One of the important things
about Caroline’s year of wearing
second-hand is that it shows
how important clothes can
be – emotionally as well as
economically. You can’t dismiss
fashion, she says. ‘It’s a serious
business, a multi-million pound
industry.’ But it’s more than that – something
that’s helped her carry on despite the deep
pain of losing someone so crucially important.
‘There’s two parts of me – the private
side that my close friends and family know
about, that’s dealing with the grief that hasn’t
gone away. Then there’s the public side, the
Knickers Model’s Own campaign.
‘Early on I didn’t want to present myself
looking sad in front of the camera. There are
days when it’s been hard to take a picture, but
it’s a mind-over-matter thing. Whatever you
are doing, whether a run or a climb, for a week,
a month or a year, all challenges are hard.
‘I set myself a very high bar for a year, but
I don’t look back and regret it. I’m really proud
of what I’ve done. It reminds me of Mum
in a positive way because she’d be looking
on Facebook and Twitter and commenting.
She’d love it and that keeps me going.’
Mumwouldalways
commentontheshop
windowsIdressed.A
lotofpleasurecamefrom
thatsharedloveofstyle
WhatdoestheWI
meantoyou?
Caroline’s grandmothers were both
in the WI: ‘It’s part of my childhood.’
One was a farmer’s wife in Cheshire.
‘I didn’t know exactly what went on
at meetings but I imagined it was the
equivalent of a men’s social club. My
other grandmother was a teacher, a
great speaker, very artistic and involved
with her WI in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire.
I’m very proud they had that connection
and I’m interested in getting involved
myself. I will join!’
Left: with her keen eye
for a bargain, Caroline
chooses clothes and
accessories to ring the
changes each day
Below: make-up artist
Chloe Hiskett works
with Caroline at our shoot