Last month, helping my parents clear out some cupboard space in our family home, I stumbled across a fashion treasure trove. Buried underneath a pile of scratchy old towels was a blue Ikea bag crammed with relics from my teenage wardrobe; they’d clearly been earmarked for a charity shop at some point, but never left the house. Of course, not all of them were worth getting excited about (ratty old freebie T-shirt from a nightclub ominously named “Loveshack”, anyone?) But I was genuinely thrilled that this cache included a couple of pieces from Kate Moss’s old Topshop collections: a navy blouse with massive puffy sleeves, and a sky blue dress covered in painterly red poppies.
Somehow, more than a decade and a half has elapsed since I bought them with my babysitting money. And yet neither item would look particularly out of place in my wardrobe today. The top, especially, with its extravagant sleeves, could easily be from a recent collection by Damson Madder or Ganni; back in 2008, I was mildly perturbed when someone told me it was “very Lady Di”, but I now know that to be the highest compliment. It got me thinking about just how well Topshop’s old designs – I can’t bring myself to describe these clothes as “vintage”, because that would make me vintage, too – have managed to withstand the test of time.
