I’ve just been clothes shopping for the first time in about four years. I hated every minute of it, I know I’m not the only one, and I know we’re right to hate it.

Western culture presents this activity to me as an enjoyable leisure activity that will allow me to express something about myself – The vanguard of this message – whereby the ideal of ‘clothes-shopping-as-liberation-through-self-expression is presented to us is through the increasing array of clothing-lifestyle programmes where fashion-hero celebs, such as Gok Wan, who, between strutting around expressing his camp-vivaciousness, finds the time to advise aesthetically challenged individuals how to successfully negotiate their way through the bewildering choices on offer in today’s fashion landscape. In episode after episode of this show, subject after subject goes through a ‘road to Damascus’ experience in which, after much counselling and cajoling, they eventually end up with ‘a look’, or if they’re young and attractive, maybe even ‘the look’ – and feel much better about themselves.

Oddly, my recent ‘road to Crawley’ clothes-shopping experience was most un-Damascus like. I seem to have ended up spending the best part of half a grand to end up with the same old sort of stuff – and I think this is what clothes shopping is about for most people – rather than clothes shopping being about standing out and expressing one’s true self – it’s more about buying the same old shit so my social persona fits in with very ordinary and hardly-changeable pre-existing fashion- standards. For me, and I know this is the case for most other people, especially men, clothes shopping at best involves my avoiding looking less like the loser in slacks rather than my succeeding in finding ‘the look’ that makes me stand out as someone worth knowing.  What is also painfully obvious is just how many people – men especially – are with me on this – so many of them clearly do not enjoy the process of shopping for clothes – it is painful to watch – I know it, they know it, and so do all the people working in the stores – all of us making our pathetically limited choices just make sure we don’t actually stand out….

Personally, I think this is about the best I can ever hope for when it comes to fashion – given a number of things – my general cluelessness about what’s fashionable – which is understandable given that what’s fashionable is a highly flexible and changeable social construction; my lack of knowing anyone that knows about fashion who would be prepared to come and shop with me; my lack of a partner (which in turn is possibly related to the fact that I think partner-clothes-shopping is pretty much the Nadir of any relationship); my relative lack of leisure time (as well as my desire to other things with it); and given a my lack of desire to spend that much money on clothes. Oh, and more important than any of this, is the fact that I just think that judging people by the clothes they wear is incredibly shallow. I don’t feel liberated by the last few hours spent clothes shopping, I feel trapped by its unfortunate necessity.

And right there lies another annoying thing about all of this – while in principle I am free to choose to never buy any new clothes again – in reality this is a monstrous freedom –  I have to go through this ritual periodically. I can’t detach myself entirely from fashion-norms because I don’t really want to stand out – I, like most other people, just want to ‘fit in’ – I don’t want to use anti-fashion to stand out – I don’t want to use crusty-fashion to express my distaste of Capitalism, I don’t want to go naked to show my anti-materialism, and, even though I’ve contemplated it, I can’t quite bring myself round to just wearing exactly the same things day in-day out (I’ve considered overalls for example, but no) – I can’t help it, I feel the  need to ‘fit in’ – which isn’t terribly unusual by the way – and so I can’t avoid not making clothing choices, I can’t avoid spending time and effort on this – being part of this society necessitates some time and effort being invested in this most shallow of experiences, and as a result I’ve ended up feeling horribly depressed and somewhat trapped. This feeling of being ‘trapped by choice’ is I think partly due to the fact that despite the bewildering ‘variety’ of men’s fashion on offer, there is, actually, an incredible lack of variety – I mean, honestly, of all the colours and cuts available – I am left with a huge amount of very limited choice – but as a result of money being spent on making item A ever so slightly different to item B, and of course because of the huge mark up, I end up paying huge amounts of cash for something cut in a slightly different way, with a slightly different collar, or, if I’m 12 and uber-shallow, a certain logo.

Of course for those with more money (or possibly more willingness to go into debt) – they can transform this thoroughly negative experience of clothes shopping into something very positive – but this takes not only cash – but considerable time and effort – you have to understand fashion for a start, and I for one wouldn’t know where to begin. So I’m stuck in this limbo land of having to accept going through the ‘ritual of choice’ – going clothes shopping – without actually exercising that choice that in any way that makes me a fashion star – I end up expending money, time and emotional energy on just standing still –

Those willing and able to do this must be in a minority – less than 10% of the population? – but of course, it may seem like more, because these type of people are the more visible – in order to justify the time they invest in their fashion choices, they have to go out and put those choices on display. The end result is that because of this minority of people exercising their financial and stylistic freedom being more visible, both in ordinary life and in hyper reality, we get a mistaken impression about ‘normality’ – we kind of get the impression that investing time and effort in nurturing ‘a look’ is what people in Britain do – when, actually, it is not – pause a moment on the high street on a typical weekday – most people are wearing remarkably drab clothing – mostly hues of blue, black and grey for example – but most of those people would have had to have spent time choosing between items that are very similar to each other…..

So isn’t this just another victory for Capitalism, and what the hell do I actually do about this? The answer is I don’t actually know – but at least when I’m parading around in my new clothes, that look very much like my old clothes, I certainly won’t be giving anyone the satisfaction of looking like I’m feeling good about myself – especially since I haven’t got round to buying any new shoes yet… and we all know that a new look just isn’t complete without shoes, is it now…

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