Is anyone buying more clothes in person rather than online?

I'm out walking every day, and unlike many I do my supermarket shopping in person so I am leaving my house and talking to others almost every day of my life. I also am not the usual MN misanthrope - I answer the door when the bell rings, even if I'm not expecting someone 😆

However, I dislike shopping for clothes in a store. There is too much choice, yet little that actually appeals to me so I would rather do proper research online and order exactly what I want.

Well in my case I find it easier to try things on in the comfort of my own home than in a changing room, where the mirrors always seem to distort everything. I'm not in the sticks but the shops in my small town rarely stock the clothes I like and it's expensive to travel to the nearest city.

I have just organised a return for a pair of jeans which are a little too large. I wrapped them up, booked a courier online, placed the parcel on my doorstep and at some stage someone will pick them up and they will be on their way - couldn't be easier! (I'm not in the UK btw).

Aside from underwear and pyjamas the only real shops I've regularly bought clothes in for quite some time are these

https://frontiers-woman.com/
https://dicks-edinburgh.co.uk/
https://godivaboutique.co.uk/
https://de.oska.com/

and the best knitwear shop in Scotland, Chandlers of North Berwick who doesn't do online sales.

Recently had a special trip to Belfast to go to Kindred of Ireland and Envoy of Belfast. And as I was in Penzance last month I bought a Seasalt cotton dress (which was excellent for being on holiday)

Most of my shoes are from Pretty Ballerina who annoyingly closed their branch in Covent Garden but I know their sizing so online is fine. If I have time when I'm in London I'll go the Brook Street branch. Palava has a tiny shop near King's Cross and if I have time I'll look in there.

I rarely have to return online purchases and it's always because I wasn't honest with myself about sizing.

I have serious envy of anyone with access to those shops @PhaedraTwo. Even if I couldn’t afford to spend anything, I’d settle for being able to look. In fact I’d settle for a Uniqlo.

There's also Epitome but have to impose some restrictions on myself.

https://www.epitomeofedinburgh.com/

I've never managed to get to Colenimo when I'm in London but there I'd struggle to find something I didn't want to buy.

I don't think of myself as young, I don't actually think about myself in terms of age at all. I expect when I'm in my 80s I might accept that I am old, but as far as I'm concerned age very much is a state of mind to some extent. I don't act old, I don't look old and I don't feel old, therefore I am not old. In my experience those who describe themselves as old as soon as they hit 50/60 age worse than those who don't, so I will continue to think of myself as not being old - and it really has nothing to do with you!

I prefer online. Like to try on in comfort of home and the decide immediately if I am keeping. I collect all my returns (3 this week) walk to the high street then send back. Whenever I have been into town previously to shop they had no stock. Annoyances with returns though include shops that charge for the service.

I agree. There’s nothing wrong with being old and describing yourself as such.
However mid fifties is not old and I find it a bit weird that the poster I was replying to is around my age (56) and said she felt too old to use internet shopping and described herself as ‘an old gimmer’.

Apologies to that poster if there is a chronic illness or something else I’ve missed at play here.

I actually think it’s quite demeaning to dismiss being old as a state of mind, as if it’s some kind of personality defect that you can avoid through positive thinking. But this is now derailing an interesting thread. I won’t be responding to you again.

Back to the thread, I also think the loss of real shops has had a detrimental effect on a lot of town and city centres. I rarely have have to go into town now but when I do, I come away feeling depressed. Shops that didn’t reopen after lockdown still standing empty five years later, the only new businesses are vaping shops. And the smell of weed everywhere.

Yes i buy clothes in person mainly because i have a lot of difficulty getting clothes to fit me.

From observation I would say that the majority of mainstream shops have very definitely shifted their main efforts to their online offering. One can see that from the drab, unimaginative state of most physical clothes stores these days. So it would seem a misguided waste of my time to repeatedly wander around a High St shop that its owners and management simply do not care about.

As for age - I look older than I did ten years ago; I’ve suffered the health, bereavement, family and domestic complications that anyone might in their fifties and sixties, but my interest in clothes is as strong as ever (and enhanced by access to the internet and AI) even as my lifestyle and wardrobe has evolved.

My local town centre has changed since Covid and now there is very little quality or choice. I enjoy shopping in person as a social event, but generally think I’m fortunate to be able to easily shop online for brands I like via Next and M&S. We have both of those stores locally out of town and collection and return is easy. I get what others are saying about sizing thought. I can be any of 3 sizes. From what I’ve observed both stores are well used to customers making multiple purchases and returns.

To be clear, I don't think we can turn the clock back - those high streets have gone. But I think they've left a hole, both physically and socially and I've yet to see anyone with an imaginative but realistic plan of how to fill it.

Agree.

Going into my local town centre is a bit of a depressing experience these days. Even if I wanted to buy clothes in shops, there is little choice. Most of the good shops have closed - there is a huge Primark, a Zara, a department store (which is nothing like as good as the Debenhams it replaced).

Now there a plenty of restaurants, coffee shops, bars. Everywhere is looking grubby and uncared for. Not somewhere I want to spend a lot of time in.

Yes even a caffeine head like me can only get to one coffee shop a day.

But I'd love a Zara, even though everyone who has one tells me it's a shit tip.

Yes, I have given up on online ordering other than the odd too-good-to-miss Vinted bargain. I don't know why we all moved to this online haul model, it's horrible and I can't bear the faff of returns so a proper shopping trip once per season is back in my calendar and I'm loving it.

Zara isn't very good any more, IMO.
I only have a high street budget, but the high street has collapsed.

I usually buy all my clothes in actual shops and rarely buy online unless it’s things like school uniform where I know the sizes or things like sportswear and knickers. But I only go clothes shopping 2 or 3 times a year normally.

What I might do is look online and screen grab stuff I’m interested in then look for it in store to try on. I don’t want the faff of ordering online then sending clothes back.

However, I did a big summer clothes shop when I was visiting family in London in June, so I won’t need to buy anything for summer for at least a year or probably two.

The idea of buying clothes every few weeks appalls me, to be honest.

I don't have any good shops in my town, a neighbouring more prosperous town has Hobbs, Phase Eight, Seasalt, Fatface, White Stuff etc and a third more prosperous but rather bohemian town has a brilliant secondhand and charity offering. If I want a big city shop I have 4 cities about 1.5 to 2 hours drive away, which is ok a few times a year. All in all it's not the worst but I do appreciate online is great if you are unable to leave home much or are properly in the wilds. My town used to be decent - big Debenhams, M&S, Monsoon, Next. All gone.

I buy online.

The physical shops near me where I loved to shop are all closed now. If I go to the large out of town M&S store to browse I find that they never have my size (8) - despite the rails being full. I then get told by assistants to buy online when I mention it.

I don’t understand why they can’t get their stock control to reflect what items are required and in what volume. It’s disheartening.

I mostly buy in person. I don't have the patience for most online clothes shopping. If I buy online it's very specific or Sainsbury's clothes site!

Turning the high street around would bring so many wider benefits, more social contact, local jobs and jobs for young people (weekend working).

We have dumbed down and allowed cheap Chinese imports to take the market. We seem to have lost the knowledge of what quality is, fabrication and materials making buying decisions based on cost.

Shops cannot stay open without customers.

Europe has not suffered in the same way. IME thriving high streets, market days, social times and a huge range of quality clothing.

I agree, but the ship has sailed. It started in the 70s/80s with chains taking over the town centres. I remember lots of complaints in the 90s that all town centres looked the same, same chain stores, etc. Then in the 90s came the big out of town supermarkets and retail parks which knocked the town centres, at the same time they were starting to obsess about traffic reduction via one way systems, high council car park charges, pedestrian traffic lights everywhere, pedestrianisations, etc. So the High Streets started to decline as drivers just went to the out of town places instead. Then the 00s and 10s came internet shopping which is the final nail in the coffin of bricks n mortar retailing. Throughout that earlier period of a couple of decades, investors and pension funds eagerly bought high street retail premises and hiked rents.

I can't see how we can reverse it as it's gone too far. People like the convenience of online shopping and out of town retail parks. "Prime" retail space is still stupidly expensive in terms of rent and business rates - far beyond what the market can bear.

With regret, I'm inclined to agree with @Badbadbunny about the ship having sailed.

But that's interesting, @DidVeryWell if Europe hasn't gone the same way. I've noticed that in large European cities and holiday destinations the shops are still busy, but then that's generally true of the UK too. Does it also apply in Europe to smaller cities and towns?