I love clothes; I loathe clothes shops. Like many of my contemporaries, I have embraced the world of online secondhand shopping. And yet, I also want to live in a place where people walk, shop, gather and eat in their city centre. I want the high street to remain as healthy and as unhomogenised as possible. I know that online shopping is killing off traditional shopping areas and apparently, even online shoppers buying new are having a fairly miserable time; so-called serial returners will buy – and then post back – £6.6bn worth of unwanted online purchases this year. More than a fifth of non-food purchases made online in the UK are now returned to the retailer, and there’s usually a spike in returns around Christmas.
And so, with my debit card weighing lightly in my pocket, I decided to head into town and have a go at some bricks-and-mortar shopping. I would stand in those changing rooms, smell those diffusers and, this being half term, queue up behind some hormonal teenagers dressed as Gwen Stefani 25 years ago.
The last new piece of clothing I bought was a six-pack of M&S full briefs as I pulled into the second trimester of my current pregnancy and realised I no longer wanted to be cleaved in two by my own underwear. But while I am covered for undergarments, I had completely run out of jeans that fit me. So I headed to Uniqlo and was met with something called a soufflé yarn half-zip jumper. I could practically inhale the acrylic tufts coming off it as I walked to the stairs.
Now, here is my first observation about modern clothes shops: their accessibility has improved very little since the 1990s. Perhaps all the lifts were just hiding from me, but during my various real-life shopping trips over the course of that week, I walked up more stairs than I would crossing London on the transport system. If I were a wheelchair user, or someone with a buggy, I would probably have struggled to reach several changing rooms or second storey departments.
My next stop was & Other Stories, which feels a lot like H&M’s more sophisticated older sister. It was all faux succulents and brass fittings, and the assistant actually offered to carry my armful of clothes to the fitting room, which you don’t get while browsing Vinted on the toilet. I tried on two dresses – one that made me look like a vulva and another that was presumably designed for that special woman who has always, deep down, longed to experience life as my grandmother’s sofa.
This shop, like Reiss, Mango and Anthropologie down the road, seemed reluctant to put out clothes in any sizes above a 12. Which, when you’re 27 weeks pregnant, proves something of a challenge. I tried on a pair of jeans whose zip barely reached half mast, and a cream jumpsuit that gaped between the buttons like Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
Feeling elephantine and unwelcome, I headed up one of the shopping centre’s many staircases, this time overlooking a middle-aged woman eating lunch while sitting on, as far as I could tell, a large, synthetic pebble. Pausing for breath, I realised I was outside Ann Summers. Just through the door was a 6ft man in a fleece and glasses, holding a pair of handcuffs, precisely as you’d hope. I was intending to try on one of the imitation air hostess uniforms in the window but, again, I wasn’t sure any of that merchandise was designed with a woman sporting a 42in waistline in mind.
On a sale rail, I did eventually find a pink lace bodice with a plastic miniskirt attached. I tried it on in a changing room that had all the charm of a meat safe; the hooks were loose on the walls and the light was that particular shade of blue-white that makes Caucasian skin look like sausage casing.
The next day I cycled to an Urban Outfitters on my way to return some books to the library. It was hot, rammed and looked so similar to the interior of a charity shop that I audibly gasped when I turned over a price tag on a pink fluffy pillow in the shape of a cowboy boot and discovered that it cost £35. Thirty five actual pounds. There were faded hoodies, ugly wall hangings, fleeces and a cushion printed with the words: “Don’t be a dick”.
On Friday I decided to try my local Barnardo’s, where I promptly spent £30 on a mustard yellow Ikea blanket, a white shirt with an enormous Peter Pan collar, a black Lycra jumpsuit, a boxed collection of seven Marcia Williams books, a pair of knitting needles and a bread tin. The woman at the till had a voice like gravel rolling down a sword and none of the merchandise actively swore at me. It was wonderful. Charity shops always are.
During my week of offline, real-world shopping I saw: a stall advertising a low GI subscription service for dog food; a pair of £100 white trainers that my old science teacher Dr Rugg wore in 2002; a man who had decorated his bicycle with placards warning about the impending political apocalypse; a purposely inside-out jumper for £77; a stand celebrating the music and dance of China before communism; a pair of mucus-coloured boots shaped like a camel hoof; a giant bubble-gum machine; and a teenage boy nervously fielding his girlfriend’s questions about a long purple leather coat that honestly made her look like a conspiratorial aubergine.
You don’t get any of that while blinking through a website on your phone at 2.14am, of course. But apart from visiting charity shops on my way to other errands, I’m still in no hurry to return to real-life clothes shops.
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