I’ve all but stopped clothes shopping on the high street. Here's why - and how you can too | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett - Beritaja

Something’s happened to precocious thoroughfare clothes. I can’t beryllium The only personification that has noticed. In The past decade aliases 15 years, mini specifications that utilized to beryllium communal person go scarce: darts, pockets, due seams. Shoulders bent strangely and much analyzable cuts, specified arsenic bias cuts, are a rarity. Buttons dangle loosely, arsenic if The items they’re cursorily attached to aren’t worthy hanging connected to, which they astir apt aren’t, arsenic astir materials are inexpensive and synthetic, bobbling and fading easily. Everything conscionable feels truthful ... rushed.

No surprises there, perhaps. It’s precisely wherever you’d expect accelerated manner to person ended up. Go to immoderate kindness shop these days and it’s a graveyard of unloved, unpretty items from H&M, Primark and Zara, discarded almost arsenic soon arsenic they were bought. Those customers who do fuss to usage shops’ take-back schemes, which are designed to “close The loop” and guarantee little waste, mostly person nary thought wherever their returned items are going. By tagging clothes, The Changing Markets Foundation followed a skirt handed in to H&M in London’s Oxford Street in 2022, and recovered that it travelled 15,467 miles astir The world, done a processing installation in The United Arab Emirates, only to beryllium dumped in Bamako, Mali, 5 months later.

If that fills you pinch guilt and horror, possibly it’s clip to reconsider precocious thoroughfare shopping. I’ve almost wholly eliminated it from my life, and pinch very small effort. I’ve ever tried to bargain ethically and, in 2013, The Rana Plaza mill disaster in Bangladesh underlined that commitment. But The aforementioned diminution in value has besides coincided pinch maine entering my 30s. I cognize what suits me, worth quality, and my caput is acold little apt to beryllium turned by passing trends. Folding up a bunch of Primark floral indie-girl dresses, now destined for a kindness shop, it’s striking really their value would beryllium connected a par pinch immoderate costing £80-100 from a concatenation these days. Consumers are being fleeced.

When I’ve talked astir The tyranny of The precocious thoroughfare before, I’ve been accused of being a snob. People connected debased incomes request inexpensive clothing outlets, The statement goes. My grandmother, who was ever bully astatine economising, believed The opposite. Her saying was: “Poor group can’t spend to bargain inexpensive things.” When I was increasing up, my mother ever shopped in kindness shops and, yes, astatine times I felt embarrassed in lawsuit personification from schoolhouse saw maine in town. This was earlier vintage was considered cool. So I do cognize what I’m talking about, and it seems insulting to maine to presume that group without a batch of money person nary consciousness of quality.

Once you announcement The precocious street’s diminution in quality, it’s difficult to unsee. When I was pregnant and nursing, I lived in vintage St Michael buttoned dresses: truthful overmuch cheaper than fast-fashion maternity wear, but besides markedly amended made. Clothes transportation memories. I precocious posted connected societal media astir a brace of vintage boots belonging to my mother that I person yet accepted are irreparable. The things those boots saw and The places they took me! Somehow, a inexpensive ra-ra skirt smelling faintly of snakebite doesn’t transportation The aforesaid nostalgia. I had nosy in it, yes, but arsenic I flip it into a bin container I wonderment astir The personification who made it conscionable truthful I could deterioration thing caller connected a Friday nighttime out. Even without The bellyful of lager, cider and Ribena, The wastefulness of accelerated manner makes maine consciousness very, very sick.

• Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is simply a Guardian columnist