Opinion

Anita Robinson: Fast fashion has proved to be a mixed blessing

The new Primark store in Belfast. Picture by Cliff Donaldson
The new Primark store in Belfast. Picture by Cliff Donaldson The new Primark store in Belfast. Picture by Cliff Donaldson

It’s a sign of our times when the loss of a flagship Primark store, rather than the architectural gem it was housed in, provoked an almost apocalyptic outpouring of public dismay at being suddenly and shockingly bereft of a major shopportunity.

‘Fast fashion’, once the egalitarian guarantee we could all be well-dressed no matter how limited our budget, has proven to be a mixed blessing. There’s no lure so irresistible as a constantly-changing plethora of goods that are accessible, fashion-forward and best of all, inexpensive. It has turned many of us into pathological buyers who can’t come home from town without a carrier-bag (or two) for the cheap thrill of a one-wear wonder.

I was going to wax a bit ‘holier than thou’ about this until I remembered with a guilty start that in the youthquake that was the late sixties and seventies, I bought a dress or shoes nearly every weekend, because it was social death to appear in the same outfit on two consecutive Saturday nights.

What was there not to like about Etam, C&A, Dorothy Perkins and little boutiques full of stuff cheap as chips? My student grant was blown in a month. My teacher’s salary similarly splurged. I’d been teaching for seven years when my father died and I still owed him money.

I blame it all on a postwar upbringing and the influence of a breed of rationing-inured mothers whose mantra was ‘make do and mend’. I and my peers were hand-knitted children who longed for a shop-bought jumper with a scratchy label at the back of the neck and whose ‘good clothes’ were worn exclusively on Sundays and special occasions and grown out of before they showed any signs of wear.

The sartorial revolution of the sixties scandalised our parents, but saved us from a dowdy adolescence of Courtelle twinsets and Crimplene skirts. What a can of worms that decade opened. “You’re not going out in THAT?!” they remonstrated. Oh yes, we were – and did and took our uncertain stiletto-ed heels headlong down the path to fashion victimhood, from which, for some of us, there was no return.

What I can’t get over is the increasingly rapid transcience of style – three or four months and it’s ‘sooo over’. Copies of designer desirables are in chainstores within a week at a fraction of the price. Fashion, with the profit motive ever at its inconstant heart, displays a positive perversity in persuading us into the enthusiastic espousal of the hideous. Currently, ‘street’ style reigns – ghastly pairings of big, shapeless jumpers with flimsy mid-calf pleated skirts, accessorised with trainers, clootery as canal-barges. (Be still. These too shall pass)

Fashion unashamedly plunders the past for ideas. Take the jumpsuit for example, arguably the most inconvenient garment ever designed for women. This is its fourth iteration since Rosie the Riveter first appeared in a mechanic's boiler suit on a forties wartime poster. Biba’s sixties take on it was a sleek catsuit, the seventies version was modelled on painters’ overalls and the eighties on a flying suit with padded shoulders and many pockets, unflatteringly placed. I have destroyed the photographic evidence of myself in all three. Should you be a fan of the jumpsuit’s current mode – always make sure there’s a lock on the toilet door.

There is of course, an uncomfortable ethical aspect of budget fashion which we prefer not to dwell upon. As we rifle through the rails for a couple of impulse-bought wee tops we don’t need, or pick up a pair of holiday espadrilles, does it occur to us that our ‘bargain’ has probably cost someone else dear? Where were they made? By what labour force? In what working conditions? And how fairly paid? Do we care?

Reputable surveys show that shopping is our number one leisure activity. With few exceptions, we’ve been inoculated with the acquisitive gene and are governed by the retail imperative. Fast, cheap fashion has turned us into conspicuous consumers and a throwaway society. Time to tighten our belts perhaps? Or at least zip our purses… I’m on a fashion diet for January.