I remember, as a teenager and young adult I had a fantastic choice of little shops and boutiques, all offering their own unique designs and styles at a price I could afford. Each designer had a distinct style, so individual to them that you could tell, from what a person was wearing, where they shopped. Nowadays that style and individuality is missing. These quirky little boutiques were slowly bought up and incorporated into bigger companies and were eventually spat out as generic chain-store retail outlets selling mass produced tat. These high-end, high priced retailers lack style and exclusivity, they have nothing on offer other than drab clothes in drab colours; you can buy the same outfit, but in a different shade of mush, or with a slightly different tacky trim, next door; displayed in uniformly bland and often poorly lit shops. Do they think that if it’s dark you won’t examine the goods too closely? Could all this be about to change?
Recently I have read in the news that several overpriced high end fashion companies are going into administration and look set to disappear from many of our high streets And shopping malls. They cite increasing overheads and falling demand, mainly, according to them, due to the Covid 19 pandemic. Whilst I feel for the workers who may lose their jobs, especially in these uncertain times, I feel it is our changing attitudes which were possibly contributing to the collapse of these companies even before the Covid 19 lockdown. Do we really need all these high end fashion brands? What makes them any different from the more affordable brands? Are the garments made any differently to other brands? Do they use a special, hard to find fabric? Do they last longer? I will always remember a programme on TV a few years back where the presenter visited a bra making factory in China. They made bras for an extremely over-priced high end retailer. The very same bras were also going to a well known supermarket and selling for a fraction of the price. The only difference was the colour of the trimmings, the label and the price. This is true for most of the clothes we buy today.
Many years ago I recall asking my daughter; during a trip to the local shopping mall; why she was looking at a vest top costing £25 when just across the way she could get practically the same top for £1.50. This was a plain ribbed vest top with a four inch strip of lace and four buttons stitched to the front. For the cost of the cheaper top and a few pence for a strip of lace and some buttons she could have the same style top several times over. But it was the label she was looking at. And there is the difference. We have been conditioned by the media, designers (and I use that term loosely) and celebrities to believe that the label is everything. But let’s not forget that these celebrities are being paid to push these brands. Each season we are told that such and such celebrity favours a certain brand and off we all go to buy the latest outfit from their preferred outlet where we happily pay through the nose to walk around with the brand name splashed across our chest and back, just so we can look like our favourite celebrity. This happens every time the latest designs hit the rails. Which is good for the brand, all that free advertising walking the streets on a daily basis.
Whilst there will always be those who have an inexplicable desire to shop in these outlets, for many, attitudes are changing. Due to a heightened awareness of the damage our throwaway culture is doing to our climate more and more people, including younger ones, are becoming conscious of the waste being generated by the fashion industry and are looking at ways to reduce their own. They are beginning to question the need for a rapid wardrobe turnover every few months and are finding ways to update their wardrobes without breaking the bank. I do occasionally buy an expensive outfit, preferably from a more exclusive shop, which I will keep for several years, but I buy my basic, daily wear wardrobe items from cheaper stores and supermarkets, as do most of my family. Another way to revamp my wardrobe is by swapping vintage clothes around between my sister and a few friends, depending upon who they fit at the time. We also scour the growing number of vintage, second hand and charity shops for bargains. There are now hundreds of pre-loved and pre-owned sites on the internet and sales in these areas are booming. These are the places where, if you look hard enough, there are some really unusual finds to be had, you may even find those “labelled” clothes for a fraction of the original price. And when you do find that perfect outfit, chances are that no-one else will have the same one, so you will stand out from the crowd far more than you would in the generic styles of high end fashion. We are turning into bargain hunters who are now perfectly happy to hold our “new to us” acquisition aloft and proclaim to all that it only cost us a couple of quid! And what we no longer need, rather than throwing it in the bin and adding to the already overwhelming mountain of rubbish we are producing, we are donating back to the charity shops or weighing it in for recycling, thereby doing our bit. And if this means the downfall of some of these tacky designer stores I, for one, won’t miss them.