One of the strangest things about living in a time of supposedly limitless consumer options is the lack of genuine choice. There is a lot of stuff, and it is very easy to access, but much of it is essentially the same thing sold by multiple different retailers – or a close copy of something that was popular within the last few decades, years, or even months. A consumer landscape of blandness and endless repetition is sold to us as a world of infinite possibility; and I am never more aware of this than when I visit high-street clothes shops.
This is not new. Thanks to the constant, freakishly rapid copying of designer brands, the cross-pollination of trends between risk-averse, competing outlets and the tendency for umbrella companies to open sister shops that have an almost indistinguishable ethos to the original outlet, the world of high-street fashion has been derivative and uninspiring for years. But returning to shops recently, for the first time since the pandemic started, the sheer blandness of everything seemed more noticeable than it did before.
I’m not saying designer…
