The tank top really has made a comeback. Primark has lots
I have been trying hard to remember if I kept one in particular, an interesting Fair Isle pattern knitted by my own fair hands. It struck me that it must be a particularly cosy garment since it essentially has 2 layers of double knitting wool, a godsend to a Raynauds sufferer in a hard winter
I never knitted purely for pleasure. But in my youth home made clothes offered both superior materials (if not workmanship) at lower cost than anything you could buy even in C&A (the Primark of its day). All that changed sometime in the 70s, & now you would expect the cost of materials alone to be greater than the cost of almost any High Street garment
Which makes me realise that it cannot be just the low labour costs, over which there is so much agonising, that accounts for the rise of the clothing industry in the Far East. Technology & economies of scale, land prices & taxes must be even more important, since for the home dressmaker the cash cost of labour is zero
