Christmas came early for all the avid shoppers in Harrow, with the opening of yet another branch of the Irish high street giant: Primark. It is the 185th store in the UK, to be precise. The 14,230 sq. ft store comes with nearly 50 changing rooms, 30 cash desks and a large wall which is a tribute to Harrow, depicting the well-known monuments. It occupies the spot where the BHS store used to be, before it went down due to bankruptcy. It is nearly three times bigger than the previous space, where a new Lidl will soon open. It has been described by the shopping centre’s manger, Pieter Strombeck, as a “very positive move”. But can we look past the obvious, gleaming assets and acknowledge the things that don’t make us happy when we see them on sale?
As a society, we seem to be obsessed with buying new things. Retailers, like Primark, fuel the fanatical fixation for fashion by providing the general public with affordable but relatively attractive alternatives. Along with cheaper prices , we also get endless options concerning colour, size and style. So, we flock to them, filling up our cupboards with clothes we may or may not wear ever again and filling our lives with the temporary satisfaction of having obtained one more piece of clothing. It seems harmless enough but this behaviour comes with a darker, underlying truth because for us to be able to acquire, we must also relinquish. And relinquish we certainly do. In Britain, an average of 235 million items of clothing end up in landfill sites every year, with the regular Briton directly binning nearly 20 pieces. Most of these are in near perfect condition, their only flaw being the fact that they are no longer on trend. Is the expansion of such retailers inciting the vicious cycle of wastefulness and our mindless pursuit of excess?
We cannot truly be blamed for enjoying shopping therapy. But maybe we need to be slightly more mindful of what we buy, so that we do not fall into the consumer culture trap. Our self-restraint is definitely tested by the arrival of new, enticing stores with their exquisite marketing and deceptive offers that make it increasingly easy for us to justify what we do. Primark, of course, is no exception and seems to be overwhelmingly full of people ever since it opened its large automatic doors.
