A British fashion designer has revealed one of her long-lost designs has been found in an Oxfam charity shop - nearly 40 years after it went missing from the designer’s warehouse, The Independent reported.
When designer Jean Pallant was told her one-of-a-kind coat had turned up in a donation bag at the Oxfam shop in Mill Hill, London, she was “very excited,” the newspaper said.
“I was absolutely over the moon, really. It was very sweet of the person who discovered it to believe that it was something important,” she was quoted as saying.
“It’s like seeing a child. It’s lovely. I know every single square inch of it, and I’m absolutely amazed that it looks so new, and it feels new. Everything about it looks exactly as it did when it went missing.”
Oxfam’s Mill Hill shop manager Marina Ikey-Botchway said she could tell the coat was a priceless item when the donation came in.
She made the discovery among a donation of high street fast fashion clothes.
“The very first second I saw the coat I knew this was something special, so I checked the label and after a quick Google found Jean’s email,” she said.
Pallant, who was part of the 1960s cultural revolution and one half of a husband-and-wife team, made the orange coat with large buttons on her kitchen table in 1988 and it featured in a Sunday Telegraph article that year.
When she went to retrieve some pieces from her warehouse nearly four decades ago, she felt “sick” to discover that the coat had gone missing along with five other pieces she had designed with her husband Martin, which still have not been found.
“It doesn’t look as if it’s ever been worn, so I’m thrilled about that as well. It doesn’t look like a rag. It doesn’t even smell of must, which is weird. I don’t know where it’s been for those years, but it’s obviously been well cared for,” said Pallant.
