Saturday shopping

When I was but a young teenager and slowly finding my fashion feet, me and my friends would head to the town on a Saturday afternoon. It was like a ritual. Each week we'd get ourselves smartened up to hit the shops and we'd spend hours trawling round, trying stuff on that we could never afford to buy and generally making a nuisance of ourselves in all the shops. These days it tends to be charity shops that I hit on a Saturday and all other shopping is reserved for the last hour after work. Until this weekend that has just passed.

Saturday found me, R and T hitting the shops. Obviously the first thing we did was arrange to meet up and eat lunch cos you can't think about shopping until you're all fuelled up! After lunch we ventured in...and within minutes of the first shop/changing room situation I was shaking my head at the sheer AWFULNESS that was the Saturday afternoon shopping experience.

First up: the fashion. I'm kind of loathe to call it that at all as there is nothing remotely stylish about what is out there at the moment. Hideous neons are just the beginning. Shapeless sacks that are supposedly tops are another. Way way too many leggings, and whoever thought that wet look and leggings was something that should be combined seriously needs to be exterminated, preferably whilst wearing their wet look leggings and slowly being tortured by visions of people in said leggings who should not be. The growing trend of wearing leggings as trousers is just beyond wrong - hello camel toe! I am shaking my head in vain at the unnecessary nastiness of this. Put. It. Away.

Next up: the changing room fun. I know you're not supposed to gawp at the sights but wow, it's hard not to. The sizing is amazing these days, there doesn't seem to be an "average josephine" anymore, instead people are either really really teeny or really really big. I actually saw one teeny teeny girl in Top Shop changing room who had a belt holding up her leggings as they were falling down off her skeleton frame...yes you read that right, a belt to hold up clothing that is essentially lycra and therefore clingy. What the heck is going on, dear readers? Having said that we did have hilarious changing room moments with R as she emerged in various sack shape dresses that were so awfully bad all we could do was fall about laughing.

Third up: Bikinis. I'm not a bikini person anyhoo, being a bit shy about exposing so much of my pale flesh to be burned on holidays, but even if I were, I would not be wearing some of the creations that were available. They were neon. And shiny. And studded and beaded and surely not designed to be worn in water? I picked up one in Top Shop and thinking that it was a size 10 showed it to T. When we actually looked at the label we found out that the 2 very small triangles on both the top and the bottom were designed for size 14 girlies such as myself. When I stretched the small triangle posing as a top over my size 14 boob, the coverage was not exactly ample shall we say. Are there actually people who wear such things???

Fourthly: I am aware that I'm sounding like a grump about the fashion but that's so not the case. I love my fashion, readers. Everyone knows this. I especially love cheap, wear for one season and throw-away fashion. But I do not like this current trend for 80s hideousness. Do we think it will go soon? But even worse, what's going to come next...?