Ah, April 12th. The day that, in England, non-essential retail, pubs, hairdressers, gyms and hospitality reopened once more. Many believe that this easing of lockdown restrictions came too early, others revelled in their ability to shop once more.

Having spent much of the last year in some form of lockdown, many people across the world haven’t been able to shop in person, instead moving online for their new fashion purchases, and this has changed our shopping behaviour drastically.

I don’t need to tell you that e-commerce has been rapidly growing in recent years - a simple look at your local high street would make that very clear. And, absolutely no surprises here, during a global pandemic when we’ve all been stuck inside, online shopping has been as popular as ever *pretends to be shocked*.

In fact, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development has published a survey entitled ‘COVID-19 and e-commerce’, examining our relationship with shopping online given the current state of the world.

According to this survey, online purchases have increased by 6-10% across almost all product categories.

*Source: UNCTAD and NetComm Suisse eCommerce Association*

We live in a digital world where anything and everything can be accessed by a small handheld device in our palms. We quite literally have the whole world at our fingertips. Whether this is a good thing in terms of fashion consumption is a conversation for another time, although it is incredibly clear that having such quick and easy access to online stores like Amazon, Shein and our favourite high street stores’ websites, puts an insane amount of wealth into the hands of the people at the very top of these corporations. I mean, billionaires have made $3.9 trillion during this pandemic so far.

Living through a major current event like a full-on global pandemic, has meant that our populations’ mental health has taken a pretty severe hit, and sometimes a cheeky online shopping trip can help bring us some joy, even if it is short-lived. So, it makes sense why online shopping rates have increased at a monumentous rate.

But, if you thought the high street would be dead and completely dried up by the time lockdowns began to ease, then the scenes from April 12th will prove you wrong!

Queues outside stores like Primark and TK Maxx were so long in places they went around several blocks. Primark in Croydon, South London, decided to open its doors an hour early at 7 am, but that didn’t stop people turning up by the shedloads! By 8 am the store was pretty much full to the brim, and there were similar stories across the rest of the country.

Perhaps what is most fascinating about this is that Primark doesn’t really have an online store, and what it does sell online is very limited. It just goes to prove that consumers are loyal to the brands that they love the most!

With constant advertising for fast fashion on all social media platforms, from influencers to simply promoting posts, trends come and go almost as quickly as the changes in weather, and with many desperately wanting to be ‘trendy’, we pile billions into the fast fashion industry each year. It makes sense why people want cheap buys, a reason why many small businesses have struggled to make ends meet in the last year.

So, what has lockdown taught us about our shopping habits?

Simply put, we have an unhealthy obsession with online shopping and have a serious overconsumption problem and we will always go back to the leading fast fashion stores.

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