I'm thinking the high street deserves to die?

[highstreetdiestreet]

Urgently need a black dress for a funeral, looked around the whole of York, nothing.

Utter dross.

Is it covid/brexit/mid-season/my being pregnant's fault?

@highstreetdiestreet

To ask a potentially stupid question, isn't viscose made from bamboo?

Yes or wood pulp. I really like viscose, although it’s technically man made, it’s essentially a natural fabric.

OP most women do want maternity wear at some point in their lives but not always maternity wear in black and suitable for a funeral. You are being a teensy bit unreasonable but I get that.

@Blossomtoes

I doubt that's the reason.

The one in my town survived mainly due to the fact they own the building.

Their business rates alone are over £2 million.

That's money that online retailers don't have to pay.

Something has to change, and I expect online retailers will eventually have to pay some form of sales tax to even up the field.

Choices are all over the place and more limited at the moment due to lockdowns etc. Working from home has changed a lot of people's tastes from formal office wear, less people dressing up to go out, more about comfort and with a squeeze on finances reasonably priced. They also have season of stock that wasn't shifted as they were closed.

The high street is not in a good place, I’ll grant you that. However, much as I prefer to shop in a physical shop to look at fabric etc (and I am an impatient bugger who wants her new purchase now…) if there was something very specific I was after I’d look online.

The biggest bug bear for me with regards the High St is the lack of variety and choice. I’m 43, not 93, but everything seems aimed at 20-somethings who want high fashion. And that’s why I’m careful about choosing where I shop. Oxford is within decent travel distance from me and there I have stores I like, like Uniqlo, John Lewis, Toast etc as well as independents. Or I go into London, because my home town is on its arse with an endless row of chains at the crappier/cheaper end of the market. I am fortunate that I can afford to pay more for good clothes these days (wasn’t always the case) but the chasm between decent quality and tat seems to be getting noticeably wider.

As a case in point, I have a beautiful dress I bought in Tesco. Heaps of people asked me where I got it. I had a look at their clothing last night when I was in there and it all looks really cheap (and, ironically, isn’t particularly cheap anymore).

Navy with a dark coat also works well for a funeral, and the dress would be more versatile

YANBU

We went to Glasgow recently, it used to be great for shopping but now it's rubbish - half the clothes shops have gone online (eg Gap, Jigsaw) and the rest seem to be full of nasty polyester stuff that will fall apart in a year. No staff to be seen in a few places. Everything else is phone shops, pound shops or boarded up. It's depressing. Not worth the trip.

We managed to get away to Spain in the summer and even the small town we stayed in had more choice and better quality stock!

@limitedperiodonly

OP most women do want maternity wear at some point in their lives but not always maternity wear in black and suitable for a funeral. You are being a teensy bit unreasonable but I get that.

Surely pregnant women need black dresses for work too? I didn't see a stitch of suitable work clothes.

Coincidentally I've just been reading an article and discussion on the Times website about Amazon and how good their customer service is (the case discussed here yesterday about the poster receiving bedding instead of the ordered laptop and keyboard notwithstanding). It's fashionable to hate Amazon but I actually find their service excellent and you can get everything you want. Argos used to provide that sort of service but I don't have a local shop anymore so if I have to order online I might as well use Amazon.

Going into actual shops is often an ordeal. You either have to try to find somebody to help when nobody is around (Boots); or have people following around and hassling you (Lush, Benefit). Buying online is so much easier.

DD needed a dress for her 18th birthday party.

2 weeks to go, ordered 2 online from Hello Polly, One arrived with a ripped seam, the other was a completely different colour from the pictures (think shell pink/germoline. Sent them both back.

1 week to go, ordered 2 more dresses from Revolve. Delivery date Thursday. By Saturday morning (party day) they still hadn’t arrived, so we set off for Westfield.

So we had 2 hours to buy a party dress for a beautiful, size 8, 5tft 4, 18 year old. No problem, I thought. Next, River Island, H&M, House of Fraser, M&S, Urban, Monsoon, Phase Eight… nothing. Horrible fabric, nothing in her size.

Finally bought a long blue silky number from Biba in John Lewis - the brand who made DD’s granny’s 1967 wedding dress!

@highstreetdiestreet I've seen your update. Weight gain and loss is a bugger. The outfit I mentioned I'd have to leave the waistband of the trousers undone but I've got a smart/casual top that would cover it without looking suspicious. Luckily shoes always fit . I'm glad you have something now. I hope the funeral goes well and good luck with the new baby.

I like going into shops on our high street but often don't find anything I need or want there. Or then can't afford the prices. Some independent shops here have really rude assistants.

Charity shops are a good bet when you are pregnant, there's some great ones in York though probably not on Sundays in fairness. There's lots of independent shops too but whether they open Sundays I don't know.

Sainsbury's is my go to for short notice clothing. Asda and Tesco's too but they aren't usually as nice as Tu.

@ImNotDancing

You said it deserves to die. What on Earth do you think would happen to all the workers

They'll get jobs delivering for Amazon. Or work in cafes. Things change.

It's like saying everyone has to go back to working in offices to keep Pret going. I like Pret, but if it went bust, something would replace it. Maybe not in the same form or even the same location (eg there may be more cafes in what were traditionally commuter towns), but people are entrepreneurial and will find business and job opportunities.

If I can't get what I want in my local town I'll order online. I know it's a bit chicken and egg. But where I live is quite affluent and some of us have been lobbying retailers (eg Crew or Fat Face) for years to open here and they won't despite the fact that the locals have money to spend. So they've only got themselves to blame if we all go online, really.

High street did not keep up with the times. Excepting people to drive in, pay extortionate parking, then go to a shop and if you ask for a size to be told by an uninterested staff member that if it’s not out, they don’t have it. Why? Why does the high street expect that anyone would put up with this. If you can’t it online, you would go to the nearest large mall, if you still couldn’t get it, you may go to a retail park. The high street needs to be gone already, it’s a waste of real estate.

@rainyskylight

Navy with a dark coat also works well for a funeral, and the dress would be more versatile

28 degrees in Cyprus. No coats needed!

I had the same problem when I tried to get one for work! There were more black dresses in my local charity shop then multiple high street shops.

As for maternity wear it was a disaster zone even 19 years ago when I was pregnant with my son. Even then I ended up buying online from a maternity wear exchange. Charity shops were rubbish and I wasn't buying new stuff that I was only going to wear for a few weeks and even then the main retailers only had their maternity lines in certain stores. I ended up buying larger size blouses to wear at work - not ideal as they didn't really fit properly.

"The HIgh Street" isn't some sort of divine gift from the almighty that has a right to exist.

It's merely the development of a geographical and economic system based around the way people move around the landscape. Once that changes (which it has) then the "need" for a HIgh Street evaporates.

@ImNotDancing

You said it deserves to die. What on Earth do you think would happen to all the workers

Work somewhere else. It’s not a unique concept. Has been happening since the dawn of time.

What's the point of stocking lots of sizes in shops if nobody buys them?
So they stock less, which drives people online, less into stores, the cycle continues.

There does need to be a better variety of high street shops, better stocked etc. The irony is, if shops on the HS are shit, then people will turn to online. The more people that then shop online and shun the HS, the worse HS shops will get. Until there are none left.

[quote ImNotDancing]@highstreetdiestreet how do you not see the connection?!

High street dying = millions of jobs lost

Nice grasp of consequences you have there [/quote]
Don’t think so. High street dying doesn’t mean people stop shopping. You do realize that, right?