No elevation required: the new way to shop the high street

Affordable no longer means boring. Welcome to the post-basic age of real fashion

I bet you think you know how to shop the high street. I mean, who doesn’t? It’s what we all do. You, me, the women I squish up next to at fashion shows, the women I squish up next to on the Victoria line. Yes, there are women who wear exclusively designer clothes, but even on the fashion front row they are in a tiny minority. That there are rich fashion pickings to be had at high-street prices is not news.

Still – and don’t take this the wrong way – most of us are shopping the high street all wrong. The principles by which we approach what we buy from what shop lag behind the reality of what is out there. To get the best out of the high street, we need to think again.