A British fashion designer says she is "over the moon" that one of her long-lost designs was found in an Oxfam charity shop nearly 40 years after it went missing from the designer's warehouse. When 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". 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," Ms Ikey-Botchway said. On finding out about the discovery, the designer said she was "absolutely over the moon, really".
"It was very sweet of the person who discovered it to believe that it was something important," Ms Pallant said. "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." Ms Pallant, who was "part of the cultural revolution of Britain" starting in the 1960s 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 go.
