Sophie Ashdown

Okay so admittedly this will seem a strange one!

Unfortunately last week I had managed to accidentally put my son’s wool school trousers in the washing machine which made them too tight and also about four inches too short! Aargh I kicked myself when I pulled them out of the machine with the other clothes. Thankfully I didn’t put them in the dryer also but the damage was already done anyway.

These are (were!) one of his pairs of trousers for school (6th form), so needed to be replaced. And this meant that I had to go to the huge Westfield shopping mall in West London, which is not somewhere I would usually seek to go.

So off I go to find “Suit Supply” which I had never been to as my son’s father bought him his suits for 6th form. I thought it would be a simple affair to just buy the exact same trousers but no, there were multiple different versions and then they had to be altered to fit. Thankfully they had my son’s measurements on file so were able to organise the tailor to do the work.

While waiting for the various alterations to be sorted out, I had time to have a look around the shop and realised that it was actually very interesting.

There were a wealth of different suits, shirts, ties, etc in various colours, fabrics, and patterns.

On the walls they had very effective displays of shirts and ties:

I love the patterns that are created, with the gradation of colours and placement of the different items, especially the ties.

And not only that, there were equally interesting patterns in their in-store advertisments:

The one above could be a painting of its own right, reminiscent of brutalist architecture perhaps. I would be happy to have this on the wall in my home.

Even the payment desk had this pattern that reminded me of a maze puzzle, and I couldn’t help staring at it, despite the garish red!

The workers in the store thought I was very strange to be taking photos in their shop but they didn’t seem to mind.

Upon leaving the shop I looked up and had to give props to Westfield for including these great window designs in the roof too:

Who knew that my laundry mistake would take me on a pattern discovery! (But I won’t be making that mistake again I hope!)