Big theft of fashion clothes

Press, 2 August 1985, Page 4

Big theft of fashion clothes

PA Palmerston North The theft of thousands of dollars worth of women’s designer clothes from a car in Palmerston North on Wednesday night has shattered nine small fashion companies. “It is a disaster,” said a Christchurch salesman, Mr John Carbines, yesterday. ‘•Someone has made a lot of people’s lives a misery in one fell swoop,” he said.

“Nine small companies have had half their business pulled out from under their feet” Mr Carbines’ car was broken into while parked opposite the Steeple Restaurant in Fitzherbert Avenue. About |9OOO worth of women’s summer clothing, which comprised a range of samples from nine fashion housesJjthroughout New Zealand, stolen from it

Mr Carbines said that in some cases the samples were the only designs made up. All the samples were “very distinctive?’ “I don’t know what the thieves are going to do with them. I just hope they dump them. “It is a drastic setback. It is hot just the the samples but the loss of

business as well. I have nothing to show now.” Mr Carbines is puzzled why no-one saw the theft because his car had an alarm which would have gone off once one of the windows was broken and a door opened. “The lights would have flashed on and off and the horn sounded. It would have made a racket,” he said.