Reader Q&A: our fashion editor Jess Cartner-Morley answers your questions – live | Fashion

Indigohippo asks: What has done for the mid-range shop and will it ever come back? The place that Topshop famously occupied (but see also Miss Selfridge, Dorothy Perkins, Oasis, Warehouse) when I was in my teens/20s is vacant. Now it’s all cheap fast fashion that falls to pieces or rather higher end (& Other Stories, Whistles, Nobody’s Child) which I love in my mid/late 30s but couldn’t have afforded at 20. Shops which sold affordable but decent quality clothes just don’t exist anymore or have been bought up by Boohoo/Sports Direct/Asos and are now shells of their former selves in both style and quality. Why? And will we ever see the likes of Topshop again?

Jess:

I feel about high street shopping the same way I feel about social media: I lived through the bit when it was feel-good and optimistic and now it’s gone a bit nasty and it makes me sad. I miss the old Topshop so bad! Although they do have some good stuff again now, plus you can buy there without the money going to PG which is good. The silver lining of this though is that many of the younger shoppers who, as you rightly say, are priced out of the ‘haute high street’ stuff are shopping from car boot sales or on Vinted instead.