Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Tammy Girl is back, now where are my jelly heels?
HAVE you heard
Tammy Girl is back?
If you can’t remember what I’m talking about, let me jog your memory.
On high streets all over the UK, Tammy Girl was pre-teen utopia for any budding diva with a class disco wardrobe dilemma.
In Dundee, this slice of croptop heaven was accessed via stairs to a first floor on the Murraygate.
There “jelly heels”, friendship bracelets, hot pants and culottes (cullotes!) were laid out on rail after blissful rail.
I think my own love affair with the shop blossomed in the early 90s.
It was the era of Kylie (Minogue) and Jason (Donovan).
And, believe it or not millennials, billowing paisley patterned shirts and waistcoats were EVERYTHING.
As fashions changed, anyone who ventured up those Murraygate stairs a few years later was likely to leave looking like Baby Spice.
But nothing lasts forever. Not Neighbours, not the Spice Girls and not Tammy Girl.
The stores closed in 2005 after BHS took over the chain and like so many 1990s icons, the name seemed to fizzle out. But it was never forgotten. And now, we 1990s survivors are being given a chance to relive our glory days.
The Tammy Girl chain is being reprised in the form of a 32-piece collection for online store Asos.
Alas, for now at least, it means you can’t physically enter the doors and feel the fabric of faded jeans and glittery hair scrunchies.
You can’t lightly trail your fingers over the blue eyeshadow or try on 13 pairs of oversized sunglasses.
But it’s a start.
And if the actual shop was back, I bet I wouldn’t be the only now-Tammy-woman taking a trip down memory lane.
I’d be in there like a shot, pretending I had daughters and snapping up sparkly things like a nostalgic magpie.
They say that if you wait long enough, everything comes back into fashion.
Well I’ve started saying it when I happen upon an avocado bathroom suite, or orange and brown flowered wallpaper on Homes Under
The Hammer.
So what I’m hoping for now is the return of some more of our high street heroes.
Imagine a place like Tammy Girl today.
A shop where school kids can meet their pals on a Saturday, having saved for months, so they can giggle their way round the changing rooms in wobbly heels and starchy party dresses.
I want them to know what it’s like to browse LPs and EPs, rather than touch a screen to download a song instantly.
Woolworths, BHS, Littlewoods...every city centre has the ghosts of Top Ten Singles racks and pick n’ mixes round every corner.
So hurray for one oldschool hero making a valiant comeback and here’s hoping that where Tammy Girl leads, a few more will follow.