I’m starting to realise I like the idea of shopping far more than the real thing. Lately, I’ve been losing hours to the ASOS app, scrolling and tapping the little heart on anything that catches my eye, adding it to my thousands of lost likes that for a brief moment I thought might make it to the bag. Sometimes they do; I teased those gingham trousers, brought them so close to the edge with my finger hovering over the buy button. They heard me inhale, getting closer and closer… only to close the app and give in. The blue balls of the browser, nothing is satisfying me lately.

It’s my own fault really, I know I need to stop treating shopping apps like they’re Pinterest, but I like the power. While Pinterest teases me with outfits in outdoor spaces, girls in beautiful trousers sat on uncomfortable café seats or taking power stances in galleries, ASOS offers me a big question mark that is still so appealing in its cruelty. I browse and try to dream up days to come, racking my brain for places I used to go and things we as humans used to do; trying to find the appropriate skirt to wear to the party called life where the invite has no date and no location. But it makes inspiration run dry pretty quick when all these things feel too nice for my living room. They deserve better, we would only disappoint each other.

My last victim stares at me as I write this, a flash of denim hanging limp out of my wardrobe. It turns out, if you buy a fancy dress and only wear it once to drink alone in the kitchen on your birthday, it’ll lose its sparkle. I wrote about it back in August, the way my new House of Sunny dream dress felt trapped in that ‘new-outfit-insecurity feeling’, and as it transpires that feeling is only stage one, succeeded by the avoidance phase, then an overwhelming sense of ‘why the fuck do I own this?’, and then finally acceptance. I put the dress on Depop, it spends all day shooting cutting glances at me.

But it just felt so unfulfilled, months later when all my hopes of meals out and occasions were still empty, the dress felt odd. Stuck in the middle between the reality we’re living and the reality we normally know, so many of my clothes and all the ones left unbought in my ASOS list, lack any context. New clothes still feel coded with the idea of new places, usually always tied to the concrete image of a particular day or plan, and each time when my parcel can’t deliver me that, their contents start to look like my disappointment. The knee-high boots that only ever shuffled down the road and back look stupid in their hope of a party, a new vintage handbag hangs like a relic of a past life that turned out to be fake all along. Clothes have always been so tightly tied to memories for me with my favourite pieces almost always being worn on a particularly good day. So at a time when there are no memories to be made, nothing feels all that special.

The only thing that feels contextualised and right at the moment is loungewear and soft cardigans. But I hate how joggers make me look and another piece of knitwear would be one too many, and god I miss slipping into something uncomfortable.  I miss tiny tight skirts and feeling them dig into my tummy when I sit down at a bar, I miss feeling my heels hurt, I miss wearing layers of jewellery and not being bothered by it clicking together or making my collarbone cold, I miss buying something daring last minute for an event and wearing it before I have a chance to second guess myself. I think mostly I miss buying things with a guarantee that I’ll be seen somewhere in them, a vain thing to long for but I miss my purchases being perceived.

But still, my fingers itch towards the apps, adding more things to the list of unfulfilled wants. I want floral trousers worn in spring outside a coffee shop. I want heeled loafers that click on wooden pub floors in the middle of the day on a weekend. I want star print tights that rip midway through a night out and I won’t care. I want a fully pink outfit with a fluffy jumper that feels soft and comforting on the train somewhere new. But ASOS doesn’t offer those deals, so I just won’t buy it.

Over breakfast, Emmie and I discuss our qualms with Zara. They’re opposing but united, for me I hate the waistlessness, for Emmie is the booblessness; Zara isn’t thinking of girls like us we conclude after half an hours’ worth of scathing conversation around their studio mannequin, a stationary figure we speak of as an enemy. A frienemy, an object of obsession nonetheless as we punctation our rant with the bouncing back and forth of descriptions of tops the other should’ve seen. Another conversation of glazed over eyes of admiration for all these beautiful things that will look great, on someone else.

The attempt to get my fashion mojo back has morphed into something more sinister under intense aircon and fluorescent lights shining down onto social distance stickers. On Friday in another returns queue, I was pretty thankful for my mask, minimising the pressure so I only had to fake happiness in my eyes and forehead. I struggled a bit with the act as I pulled the material out of the bag and onto the counter, pink silk, blue gingham and denim, and I loved them all. I look around the shop and I love it all. Trends at the minute are pulling me in every direction, I simultaneously want to walk delicately in prairie blouses with extravagant balloon sleeves, and pull heavy boots on with a tennis skirt and knitted vest, I want to wear lilac and green and rainbow varieties, but every time I try, no camp will have me. For the pile on the counter now being given their replacement security tags, my body had managed to be too big and too small within 3 items and 1 size. In a Zara M, my boobs are too small, my arms are too big, my waist is too small, my hips won’t fit, and my 5”7 frame will somehow be too short. I labelled myself fat as an umbrella judgement. 2 days later, I’m too small for a size XS top.

Walking out with more money, fewer clothes, I think about how much I used to love shopping back when I was 14, 15, no at 16 it started making me feel shit, remember the time I cried in H&M over my new shape, honestly who knows.

But part of me does love shopping, I go alone and early in the morning, put headphones in and almost meditate on the shapes and materials, craft imaginary outfits and wait for something to demand to be bought. Yet recently, it’s felt less floaty and more jagged, constantly factoring in the worry that these things I love won’t fit me, and maybe that not fitting me will ruin my week. I love to look at them, but these shops full of A-line skirts with no belt loops, shirred tops with no room for a bra, drop-waist dresses that work on no one but Alexa Chung; these shops don’t love me like I love them.

Shopping comes with a sense of wrongness that I know I really shouldn’t complain about. While bad trips make me feel like my hips are ugly, my arms too fat and the rest of me somewhere in between, I also know that I’m lucky to eventually have moments of success where something will settle perfectly or at least I might see a model that looks like me. When I buy trousers that come up to my boobs and finish stomped underfoot I think of Emmie, who could live inside these trousers that are marked as simply a 12 but are made for some giant. When a size XS top has space for my boobs plus 3, I think of my friends who are smaller than I am, and when a size M crushes my boobs into oblivion I think of my friends with perfect hourglass shapes of bigger boobs and a smaller waist, wondering where they’re supposed to fit in here. I think of anyone plus size, anyone petite, anyone disabled, anyone other than a size 6/8 tall, athletic built scandi-babe, and I hope they might have better luck than I am today, hope they don’t cry in the mirror or have to stand trying to hide their disappointment in another returns queues.

At breakfast, Emmie switches sides for a second to play devil's advocate for our enemy, Miss Zara. ‘This is the thing though, they’re making millions of clothes, for millions of women who all have different body types, and they’re cutting it from the same pattern for everyone. Of course, things aren’t going to fit, or fit oddly sometimes.’

Picture every mannequin, every model, every classic fashion influencer in the world, all the muses of modern style and they all have the same body or something thereabout. You walk down the street and hundreds of women slip perfectly into these jeans, or some jeans somewhere, hundreds of thousands of millions of women have that body, and fast fashion will always go with the majority at best, and at worst they’ll go for the smallest and simplest frames to cut down on cost. And while it's so shit not being in that category, for now, we need to learn to not let another ill-fitting order whisper ‘you’re ugly’ into our skin.

In an ideal world, we’d all be able to afford made to measure clothes to perfectly fit the unique curves and corners of our bodies. In an ideal world, major players like ASOS would make less but make smarter, maybe offering a skirt in different cuts to fit different shapes, extending the minimising lines of simple regular, petite and curve to give a place for all the in-betweens. In an ideal world, we’d all be able to afford tailoring or have the knowledge of how to sew, all making our own clothes with our own us-shaped mannequins. But not yet, one day, but for now it falls on us to reprogram our judgements to go from I’m wrong to simply this is wrong for my body.

With the bill paid and masks on, I fling a passing comment out that I want to be more adventurous with my style, pushing a blazer back into the charity shop racks. Emmie, always the guru, reminds me that there’s nothing wrong with staying in your lane. One of the major issues with fast fashion is the obsession with newness that it breeds. Consumerism turns taste into a competition as though we should always be striving for new, more and better, demanding a constant reinvention of the self to keep up. But reinvention and adventure are easy when anything fits, for bodies that can walk into shops and take their pick of what they like as opposed to what is likely to fit. ‘There’s nothing wrong with knowing what looks good on you and sticking to it’ Emmie says from the next rail along. And when I think about it, yeah.  I look amazing in tailored trousers that pull in on my waist, I love my legs in little skirts with baggy jumpers, wide-leg jeans with crops tops make my hips and waist curve to perfection, so maybe while I work through some of these issues and learn how best to shop for this body I’ve been given, I need to remove the pressure to step outside of my comfort zone and learn to have fun within this shapes I suit.

So as I scroll from Pinterest on an evening, I’m trying to only pin outfits that would work for me, slowing crafting my feed to suit my shape, showing me girls that look like me or wear clothes that would at least fit. This weekend I went back through my fashion board and unpinned any pictures that would never in a million years work for me, laughing at my past self for thinking I would ever brave a low-waist jean or that my hips would ever fit into an American Apparel tennis skirt without turning it into a tutu. Instead, I pack it full of Marilyn Monroe, search for pictures of her casual style, seeing some resemblance of her shape in mine. Clearing out the never-going-to-happens I remind myself that this isn’t limiting myself, the limitation is coming from me trying to fit into boxes or jeans, that I never will, continuing to bully my skeleton and beating up my skin for being wrong, cursing the way this body of mine grew.

Until the Zara mannequin splits into a million pieces to morph into any and everybody, someone will always leave a shop with a sense of otherness. But I’m trying to frame it like that, other but not wrong, hush the voices and walk on until you find a shop where you’re right, until you find an item that is right, waiting for the garment to work for you rather than forcing your body to work for a garment.

It happened eventually. Two days later I buy a cropped cardigan in another colour and happen upon jeans that fit, still thinking of all the women that weren’t as lucky, eyes unmeeting in the Zara returns queue. It’s them that’s wrong, not you.

DISCLAIMER : I recognise how extremely lucky I am to have been working from home throughout all this. Being able to even consider your relationship with shopping is obviously a huge display of privilege and I see that.

During the earlier months of lockdown, I read a really interesting piece on ManRepeller. Two of their editors were debating whether dressing is only satisfying when people see you, and consequently how our relationship with clothes has changed in a time when we were seeing no one but our housemates, and the people behind the till at Tesco.

We all tried but failed to make ‘waist-up dressing’ a thing before resigning ourselves to the fact that dressing up for Zoom is wildly unsatisfying. Denim across the country lost its purpose (nothing could get us to do up that top button) and bras became a thing of the past. ManRepeller made good arguments on both sides; talking about wanting to dress to make yourself feel better vs feeling uninspired by creating watered-down versions of outfits that always end up being paired with slipper socks. I’m still not sure where I stand as I’ve managed to get properly dressed every day of lockdown, but I’ve also felt totally bored of my wardrobe, desperate for a chance to get dressed for real, but then feeling silly every time I walk into my living room with a belt on. The interesting thing for me has been our changing relationship to shopping; is getting new things still satisfying when you have no idea when someone else might get to see it? Do you still get that same new clothes feeling when you just wear them on another day at your makeshift home desk?

My lockdown shopping habits moved through three distinct phases, tracing a line that roughly correlated to my general feelings about my life. Riding the ups and downs of excitement towards being at home, guilty cosiness and the inevitable self-analysis, symptomatic of so much time alone. I look around at these new things that feel scribbled over with feelings of hazy, lost months - I start to realise how my purchasing habits are so intrinsically tied to my mood.

Dress - House of Sunny Candles - Cire Trudon Candle Holders - Dark Paradise Vintage Necklace - Made by Frankie

To my right, candles are burning in vintage holders...

At the start of lockdown I was giddy, maybe naïve, and a little bit delusional. The end of March and start of April saw me understanding what all the Depop fuss was about, as I spent my extra hour in the morning scrolling sleepily. The money saved from my commute threatened to finally throw me into deep, luxury waters - a sea I’ve dipped my toes in as I write about luxury for work, but never dived in with a purchase. The money saved felt huge as my outgoings were suddenly stripped back to nothing but a weekly food shop, coffees from my local cafe, and the occasional takeaway. But I still couldn’t bring myself to purchase one big expensive thing; my purchases from early lockdown seem to reflect the Lana Del Rey, silk dressing gown in the corridor, Rapunzel in the castle vibes I was feeling as I sunk into my new routine of breakfast in bed am, wine in the bath pm. I bought nice candles and antique holders, a fresh stack of books, added flowers to my weekly shopping list and invested in a nice facemask; all things that were non-returnable and certain to improve my life, drowning in the capitalist image of glorious self-care in the first month of global chaos.

March to April, I bought very little in terms of fashion. With post offices shutting, my body dysmorphia wasn’t up to the panic that comes with trying to predict sizes, so my purchases were limited to hairclips, headbands and one dress. You could say that my insistence on slipping pearl clips into my hair every morning, long after work had given up on having webcams on for meetings, was a clear sign that I dress and shop for me. However, the House of Sunny dress sitting in my wardrobe relatively untouched would say the opposite. The more I think about it, the more I have to accept that a lot of my shopping habits are tied into a desire for affirmation, not so much compliments but more assurance. As someone that struggles with body image and insecurity, pretty much all of my new wardrobe additions are signed off by someone else, giving me assurance that yes it looks cute, no you look fine. Without someone with me to do that, the House of Sunny dress that I’m so in love with on the hanger, now feels trapped in that new-outfit-insecurity feeling, you know the consciousness as you walk to a bar in a new item before your friends say you look nice? Despite it being a beautiful piece from a brand I’ve wanted to add into my wardrobe for a long time, being a unique cut and not being able to go out and do a twirl for people I love and trust has definitely affected my relationship with it, one that hasn’t altered three months and one wear later.

Hairclips - July Child Perfume - Bella Freud Cardigan - Zara (similar here)

I love my cardigan and nothing else...

Lockdown has put my Zara cropped cardigan through some shit, being worn approx. three days out of every seven between March and July. Paired with a bralet and either black tailored trousers orundone jeans, I found a perfect midground to the dressing debate as I spent each day in an item that was both stylish and comfortable. As a piece that is complimented a lot and has been a firm favourite in my wardrobe for a while, a lot of my later shopping habits felt like attempts to recreate the relationship me and my cardigan had created in isolation, so much so that I ordered the same thing in a different colour. Once the dust had begun to settle and I found an open post office, I started to dabble cautiously in online shopping, trying to only order things I was certain of and working to fill gaps in my wardrobe, not branch out. I had no desire to go wild, maybe a suggestion that I sided more with ManRepeller’s Harling - having no longing to try out anything new or put too much effort into an outfit that no one would see. While I still got slightly more dressed up on the weekends, indulging in a silly habit of applying a full face of makeup just to take my daily walk, my outfits all followed foolproof recipes with proven pre-lockdown success. My relationship with shopping here saw me buying things like another cardigan, white jeans I’d been after for a while, a replacement to my favourite graphic t-shirt, and investing in a pair of Docs sandals. My only slightly more out-there purchase was a pair of lilac loafers which have become one of my most worn things, probably because of a newfound love for easily put on shoes. But when the novelty of my saved money wore off, and I finally forced myself to start doing something more productive with my extra morning hour, my shopping habits reflected a comfortable resolve, only buying things suitable for my new world that only existed between my desk, sofa and brief walk routes. Simplicity reigned when all the Lana Del Rey glamorous vibes wore off -  there was no one to impress here.

Sandals - Dr Marten's Clarissa Quads

Return to the real world...

Throughout lockdown I’d been reminding myself to save money for this huge welcome back to reality celebration. I don’t think any of us expected the weird phasing out path we’re on, but the money I’d saved for a glorious return to the IRL Monki shop is sitting dormant. Like a lot of people I imagine, the debate of who you shop and dress for is complicated by weird body relationships. My clothes have to fit perfectly;  any uncomfortable digging-in spirals me into self-hatred, in the same way that anything too big sends me on a weird ego trip as I congratulate myself on imagined weight loss. So much of this stress is eased by the distant, historical practice we called ‘trying things on’, allowing me to be sure an item won’t make me feel rubbish before I part with my pennies. As changing rooms remain closed and IRL shops still feel like deathtraps at their worst, and a practice in surveillance at their best, shopping recently has given me that empty feeling, like a kid seeing an ice cream van pass when their mum says there's choc-ices in the fridge. Since everything reopened I’ve bought four things; two T-shirts, one knitted vest, and one big baggy smock dress, all oversized and easy. The outfits they create feel like a culmination of all of the above, as all my outfits recently walk on the easy side, rarely messing around with intricate layering practices or bold choices. Maybe in part it’s because of the weird guilt that comes with doing anything, I don’t want to appear too dressed up, always trying to look like ‘oh I nipped out and bumped into friends’. Fashion is undoubtedly an expression of emotion; it talks before we can, and lately I haven’t wanted my clothes to shout anything except nonchalance and ease, as any kind of pow or celebration still comes with a chaser of guilt and anxiety. So a lot of my days are still spent in my cardigan, or my new smock dress which is an image of fuss- less simplicity in beige cotton.

In conclusion, my relationship with shopping has definitely been on a trip, and I think my relationship with dressing has been affected, but not in a wholly negative way. While the lack of interaction has made new purchases feel less affirming and exciting with no one around to assure you that your new dress looks glorious, I think the experience has probably given me healthier shopping habits, encouraging me to slow down and consider before buying. Spending the majority of my money on skincare, books and homeware instead, lockdown has definitely made me reconsider which purchases make me feel good, realising that investing in my environment and self has a far longer high than that new dress feeling. With no pending social events, there were no rushed purchases to be made, teaching me to hold off and wait for pieces that make me feel doubtlessly lovely, just as boosted and cosy as a rose facemask or new candle. While fashion is exciting and is meant to be fun and playful, lockdown shopping finally gave me the space to understand the beauty of buying less but buying smarter, filling gaps in my wardrobe to give other pieces a new lease of life, or recreating tried and tested outfit formulas so seven out of seven days can be spent feeling cute and cosy.

And now...

As we get back into Friday night drinks and Sunday brunches, I’m settling back into dressing up and starting to feel the old itch of wanting to go all out. But something about the smell of the Zara hand gel and the havoc that masks are reeking on my pores stops me in my track, no longer as drawn to new things as I am to things that make me feel great, whether that means stepping out in a batter cardi and pearl hair clips, new all-white outfits, or turning down the invite in favour of a rose facemask.

1. My inability to resist getting a coffee from the shop around the road that's thankfully reopened for takeout.
2. I get dressed every day.

Day #1 : Reinterpret the cover of your current fave album into an outfit...

Dress & T-Shirt - Vintage Boots - Topshop

Vest - ASOS Jeans - Vintage

Day #2 : Dress as if a child dressed you...

T-Shirt & dress - Topshop Pearl necklace - Made by Frankie Headband - Primark

Day #3 : Style your favourite piece of lingerie in a WFH appropriate outfit...

Top & Jeans - H&M Bra - Unreleased sample

Bodysuit - H&M

Jumper - Primark Trousers - Topshop

Day #6 - Wear something that your pre-teen self would despise...

Dress - ASOS

Day #7 : Wear something that would suit this year's Met Gala theme, 'About Time'...

Corset top - ASOS

Check out the prompts I gave Sophie & her outfits...

1. To make the customer feel beautiful, to create an experience for them through clothes
2. To care about people and the world.