Un-Shopping

Learning the art of restraint might be the best thing that’s ever happened to my wardrobe

 For anyone like myself who suffers from borderline shopaholic tendencies, this time of home isolation is proving to be the perfect cold turkey. While friends are spending hour upon hour scrolling through Facebook and forwarding fun clips, I find myself merrily trawling the internet, safe in the knowledge I can’t buy a single thing from any of my favourite fashion websites. Well, technically that’s not true – I can go through with the transaction, but when the end purchase is not going to arrive for weeks on end, it kind of defeats the object. Plus, good- sense kicks in when you consider that after 4 weeks of stuffing cake and cookies, the chances of being able to squeeze into anything will be dramatically reduced. Add to that the sobering financial reality of this time, and my parade is well and truly metaphorically rained on. However, I can’t argue with the fact that it’s still immensely gratifying to put the items in the cart, to imagine wearing each and every piece, before letting reality slowly kick in. And in my case reality is most definitely needed - because surreal times have spawned surreal shopping habits, so instead of looking for handy knits and cosy sweaters, I’m finding that I’m boasting a cart filled with silk corsets and satin maxi-dresses; incongruous when you consider I haven’t broken out of leggings and a tee for four days. Yep Karl Lagerfeld could have been looking me right in the eye when he declared “sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life, so you brought some sweatpants.”

 So how to get out of this fashion sump? Well, I think it’s reasonable to say most of us are in the same boat. One friend told me she hasn’t worn anything without an elasticated waistband since lockdown, another told me he was going to see if he could grow dreads. Time to get a grip team; maybe rather than consider this a time of comfort dressing we should look at it as a time of experimentation. A time when no one is going to judge or wonder why you might be wearing a red leather mini to school pick up (yep, just taken it out of my cart). So watch this space – let’s cast aside the lycra, look in the clothes cupboard and see what’s cooking.