Excited to see what Topshop has in store...

GIVEN that my job is to write about fashion, you may be surprised to learn I can count on one hand the number of times I have set foot in a clothes shop this year.

- BY EMMA JOHNSON

Yet there was a time, not so very long ago, when I treated shopping as a hobby almost. Every weekend was built around a visit to a major city centre. I could spend hours traipsing in and out of the stores and more often than not would come home with a gem or two... or three.

Now, I almost exclusively buy all of my clothes online.

While Covid no doubt hastened this shift, the changing face - some might say decline - of the high street has had much to do with my dramatic change in shopping habits.

Many of my favourite stores no longer exist IRL (in real life).

Case in point Topshop. Remember her? Once the queen of the high street, the one-stop-shop for luxury looks on a lemonade budget, it catered to generations of women for decades.

From childhood, when I first became aware of fashion and what was cool, I dreamt of being able to shop at Topshop. As a teenager in the Nineties, my Saturday job wages regularly poured into its tills.