The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
The thinking shopper
Easy does it
Ambivalence about heading back to the high street is only natural, says Emily Cronin. Here’s how to dip a toe back into shopping…
To be completely reductive, there exist two kinds of people in the world today: those who missed shopping during the strictest phase of lockdown, and those who would be happy never to have to set foot in a store again.
You’ll know the latter by their principled declarations. ‘There’s nothing I need that I can’t order online from M&S or John Lewis with less time-wasting and faff than driving to the shops used to be,’ they preach. ‘And if I do think of anything else, there’s Amazon: heard of it?’
The former, meanwhile, include a broad range of subtypes. The man with a drawer full of holey T-shirts and no patience for scrolling through product pages, the fashion agnostic who’s been waiting to commit to a nice new armchair or rug until she can assess the quality in person, the harried mum who longs for an afternoon of idle browsing, all by herself (ahem) – they all count just as much as the fast-fashion-mad teenagers we’ve seen queuing outside Primark since stores reopened last month.
Let’s say you’re inclined to agree with a little bit of each type’s thinking. Maybe you already have a mask-induced breakout (the ‘maskne’ struggle is real). Maybe the very thought of queuing for admission to near-empty shops makes you tired. Maybe you’ve re-examined your relationship to consumption and determined that the ideal position is restraint. But, despite all of the above, and as enlightened as you are, you still know instinctively that a new summer dress or pair of pearl-drop earrings would be most cheering, in a moment when cheering is most needed.
What’s a conflicted consumer to do? The answer is to shop thoughtfully. A simple place to start is with the numbers. Can you imagine wearing a prospective purchase in at least three ways? And would you wear it at least 30 times? If you can make sure anything you buy passes both tests, then it’ll be more than worth its hanger space.
Given that many of us are likely to remain in this weird no man’s land of working from home for a bit longer, I’m looking for pieces I’ll be able to mix into office-appropriate outfits whenever I head back to Telegraph HQ. Far better to ease back into shopping (and, for some of us, into dressing) with classic pieces that blend with what you already own, than to attempt a reinvention. But they also have to help me tap into a summer mindset. Pretty-collared cutwork blouses, gingham and peppy colours all have a role to play. Just no real shoes yet, please. I’ve got to draw the line somewhere.