I WAS telling a female colleague about a successful trip to a charity shop when a male colleague interjected.

“Charity shops, that’s typical,” he said. I asked him why he thought that and he replied: “Well, you just look...” before looking a little bashful and apologising for seemingly causing offence. I wasn’t at all hurt by it – in fact I found it funny – but it did make me think.

Now I love charity shops. I live and breathe them, so much so that last weekend I spent an entire afternoon visiting them with my daughter and friend. It was great and we came out with loads of fantastic bargains.

I love browsing in charity shops and wear lots of charity shop clothes – but I had to ask myself: ‘Do I want to be seen as Charity Shop Woman?’

I’m very picky when it comes to charity shop purchases, and only buy good-as-new or new items. The purpose being that, when I wear them, I want people to think they’re from a mainstream shop and then marvel when I mention the £2 charity shop price tag.

I don’t want people to look at me and think ‘charity shop.’ Not that I want to be seen as Upmarket Designer Label Lady or Boring Bog-Standard High Street Lass. I don’t want to be any of these things. I want to be individual in the way I dress, but not scream ‘charity shop’.

Yet charity shops have come a long way and aren’t the dowdy, stale-smelling, tat-filled places they used to be. If someone had called me Charity Shop Woman 20 years ago I would have freaked out. It would have meant I had a faint distasteful aroma and was incapable of using a washing machine.

Having said that, I still regularly shopped there in those days and got some lovely stuff. In fact, there were even greater bargains to be had before charity shops had a makeover and latched onto the real price of certain clothes.

Being such a devotee, I should be proud. After all, when someone compliments me on a new skirt or top, I’m always eager to tell them where it has come from. Yet my concern at being labelled shows that there is still something snooty in my subconscious that I must overcome.

The ago-old associations with secondhand and cheap kicked in and it’s left me in a state of confusion. Am I or aren’t I Charity Shop Woman?

Quite obviously I am. So I need to be proud to come across as such. I might even leave the labels on in future.