Beans and Jeans: Supermarket Chic

Since the dreaded pandemic hit, I gained an appreciation for the selection of clothing in supermarkets that I had never noticed before.

Let me take you back to Lockdown 1.0, March 2020. Our only options to get out of the house was either 1 hour of daily exercise, or to shop for only essential, and let me make that clear, ESSENTIAL items.

The weekly shop became a source of entertainment for me. I used to look forward to hitting the town with my friends every Saturday night, but now I was beyond excited to browse Tesco with my mum. At first due to the apparent dire situation, we did only nip in for what we needed and didn’t “mooch” about as I call it. However, as time went on and let’s be honest- we got fed up following the extremely useful government advice to a T, our “weekly shop” became longer and more of an occurrence.

“Oh, we forgot to get bread? What a shame we’ll have to go to Tesco…”

Aiming to spend as long as we could out of the house, I noticed that for some reason, the clothes were never cordoned off as “non-essential” items in any of my local supermarkets, despite reports of this happening elsewhere in the UK. To fill the retail spaced hole in my heart I tried to replicate a usual Zara trip, only instead I was in the clothing aisle of Asda.

To my surprise, I found tonnes of quite fashionable clothes at affordable prices. Like many, the postman had his work cut out for him during the lockdown as I simply could not stop ordering things online for 3 reasons. #1 – boredom: having nothing else to do except endlessly scroll my favourite fashion websites only encouraged me to make my bank account weep and order whatever caught my fancy. #2 – hoping I could wear the clothing in the not-too-distant future and give me even a crumb of hope the lockdown would be ending soon (Oh honey, I had a big storm coming...) and #3- having a parcel to look forward to really made the day go that bit quicker and something small to look forward to.

However, when I stepped into the clothing aisle, I found joggers and sweatshirts galore – the unofficial uniform of the coronavirus pandemic – in just as many colours and choice that the online retail giants were offering. This became my new weekly hobby, and don’t judge me, I considered a bargain lounge set to be an “essential” purchase at the time…

However, since then and after all the lockdowns, half lockdowns and finally our current “new normal”, the clothing options in supermarkets has only vastly improved.

My local Asda had recently been renovated and to my surprise when I walked in to the new and improved store, the clothing aisle had been completely expanded into twice its size, which I was not expecting. Selling brands, I know and love such as fast fashion giant Missguided, In The Style, and even Wrangler jeans! Where was this a year ago when I could’ve classed it as an essential outing?!!! Brands are now making it more accessible for the public to purchase clothing through collaborations such as previously mentioned, which is something I was excited to see, especially in my little town! I look forward to seeing the future of this, rather than everything being online, as so many of us miss the High Street. (R.I.P Topshop, fly high angel...)

Additionally, fashion in supermarkets has also made waves by going viral on Tik-Tok, claiming that Tesco has excellent dupes for some other brands such as Skims and Zara. I decided to test this out for myself and again, I was extremely impressed. Amongst an array of on bang on trend wearable simple casual wear I was met with an exact dupe of the long black Zara coat that was on everyone’s Wishlist, as well as extremely trendy graphic Harvard and Yale jogger sets. I had to restrain myself from buying it all!

I will admit, I have been a bit of a brand snob in the past, but I am a changed woman. In my opinion, the dupes were of extremely good quality and a fraction of the price you would pay for the named brands.

I encourage you all to see what your local supermarket has to offer and let me know if you pick up a stylish piece when you’ve only popped in for some bread!