In exactly a week from now Topshop will open its doors (albeit from within the comforts of the Paddington Incu store) on Sydney Australia. Joyous shouts will ring out, children will rejoice, teenage girls everywhere with a fashion conscience but no real high street output will give thanks to their sartorial god.
For you English bloggers, and some new Yorkers, the sheer bliss of a topshop store, an actual store not just a virtual online one, will be somewhat lost on you. It’s not just topshop though, you were lucky to grow up in a world where zara, h&m, cos and topshop are on every corner (bear with me on the generalisations here) and the high street was not only the purveyor of cheap, tacky gladrags for the club goers, but fashion forward and covetous pieces that complemented any wardrobe, high or low. You have high street stores that present at a fashion week, that collaborate with important designers, that do not belittle the average customer with the average income, and that don’t essentialise the teenage style.
Unforunately for Australians, this is exactly what teenagers get. Walk into any number of high streets stores and you can have your pick from a) boho-influenced maxi dresses, b) model off duty denim cut offs and blazers or c) tight, short, cleavage baring mini dresses for a night on the town. There is literally not much else in between. Sometimes you get lucky and can pick up things that are odd, quirky and very, very cool. But on the whole high street in Australia is just a huge bunch of same old, same old, and as a result as a nation our style tends to run down similar streets. I strongly believe though, that it is because we are fed such one dimensional mass-fashion that our style has turned out the way it has - for most teenager the touchstone is a mass-produced, mass-marketed beast, rather than a store that celebrates individuality and does not provide a meta-narrative for teenage style. Despite topshop's problems as a mass-chain store (the fashion spot is rife with complaints by members that something they love is 'everywhere' and thus has lost its cachet), topshop still manages to cater to a wide range of sartorial tastes and values. You can walk into topshop as a preppy, a francophile, a goth, a rockabilly... a whole manner of different cliques, and find something for you. If you don't fit into sexy surfer or slick city girl then you're left out in the cold.
Now, imagine what luxury, what joy, what ecstasy it is to witness a topshop. I was exposed young, thanks to a travelling sister and a fervent love for everything peaches geldof touched (I was 13, she was my role model, now you all laugh and we can move on haha). As such I developed premature anglophilia, that meant that as soon as I set foot in london aged 14 I descended upon topshop and bought big on sparkly tee shirt dresses and camouflage parkas. However when I was recently in London I had the fortune to watch one of my best friends have her first topshop experience.
I didn’t believe in love at first sight until I saw her reaction to Oxford Circus' flagship topshop store. She, a rockabilly/punk girl with an Alice Dellal undercut and a penchant for 50s style tea dresses with motorcycle boots, fell upon the wet look leggings, the acid wash jeans, the bodysuits and fishnet tights, the ankle boots and the leather jackets like nobody's business. While i went around snapping up crop tops, long skirts, breton tops and oversized blazers and tee shirts for my brothers. A happy day was spent trawling through those racks, and a couple of days later while I discovered COS, she absented herself and went right back, eager to just soak up the atmosphere before a return to australia's dull and predictable high street.
I suppose it's a case of the grass is greener sort of thing, and if we had grown up with topshop maybe we wouldn't think it was so great. But do you english people really not like topshop? I mean, sure everything has its bad sides, the biggest problem with topshop being over exposure. But you have to take the good with the bad. And the good is very good - what you have is a high street store that has transcended the high street label, it is that rare breed of chain store that no longer just slavishly reproduces catwalk looks, but interprets (and re-interprets) and makes their own significant fashion moments as well as starting trends in their own right. They are a store that captures the zeitgeist like none other at the moment, no longer just the haven for cash-strapped teens, but planted firmly on fashion's notoriously fickle radar thanks to stellar designer collaborations and a keen eye for what is 'in fashion'. Fast and affordable fashion for everyone. Not exclusive. Accessible. And oh so covetous.
So this time next week, thanks to a timely end of semester, and a fortuitous burst of productivity that means money is plentiful (though i am supposedly saving up for a camera), you will find me scoping the racks of incu's topshop concession store. Incu, for non-australians, is a boutique that stocks, among other things, alexander wang, opening ceremony, and a.p.c. I think it was the perfect choice for topshop's first toe-dipping exploration into the sydney market. Apparently the collection will sample the normal range, the unique, the kate moss collections and boutique as well. heavily edited, with a focus on clothes and shoes, but nonetheless, an entire level of the paddington oxford st store (conveniently about 200 m from my front door, oh yeah), devoted to topshop and topshop alone. Bliss!
According to statistics, us Aussies are the highest paying nation outside the UK to use topshop's online store service. We love our topshop, and hopefully topshop loves us right back.
X
ps. i know i said yesterday no blogging, but my brother generously let me use his computer to type this post. kindness can come from the weirdest of places, right? thanks oliver, i owe you!
