Yesterday's Highstreet - Jane Norman

Retail therapy options have continually evolved over the years, but clothes shopping as an activity has become entirely unrecognisable in the last 10-15 years. As someone who has shifted the vast majority of my shopping to used and second hand items, I don't spend a huge amount of time browsing the big retail names anymore. I'm not saying that a mooch around the shops is no longer worth the time, but I am fairly sure it isn't as much fun as it used to be.

For one thing, the shops on offer have reduced as online retail has chipped away at bricks and mortar business' viability. When you think back to some of the names that have disappeared from our highstreets, you'd be forgiven if, like me, you feel a little pang of sadness for the loss of those once familiar friends.

One store that I have been missing lately, as the styles of the early 00's have been enjoying a revival, is Jane Norman. Despite being around in various forms since the early 1950s, Jane Norman really enjoyed it's peak in the Y2K and early noughties years. As luck would have it, I was the right age to enjoy every stretchy fit second. I was in my late teens and early twenties when Jane Norman mastered the 'out-out' look. At a time when fast fashion was a term that still mostly meant convenient and affordable, rather than the ethical horror show we understand it to be now, Jane Norman offered a way for you to spend an afternoon with your girlfriends trying things on and all head home to change into new outfits for the club, without breaking the bank. At a time when we were getting by on pub wages and student loans, Jane Norman could was stuffed with choices. One shoulder dresses, strappy tops, low rise jeans and peplum skirts, usually with a diamante detail and frequently in an on trend shade of pink or teal, were the order of the day. I don't know how many of young women had one of those mandarin collar dresses but I can only assume that it was pretty much all of us. Add in three quarter sleeve blazers, strappy high heels you would inevitably have to take off for the walk home and tiny handbags with buckles bigger than a pack of 20 Marlboro Lights and you could be sure you would be knocking back vodka cranberry and feeling like you could conquer the world by 10pm.

All your purchases could, of course, be carted home in one of the most iconic, not to mention useful, retail carrier bags you will ever find. I didn't know any women my age who didn't have a Jane Norman bag to lug gym kit, work uniform, change of clothes for sleeping over at the boyfriends or print outs from Uni (because yes, I am that old, my Uni lecturers would print out actual pieces of paper and hand them out to the class on a regular basis and I would need something to carry them around in. Not a backpack - I'm not a tourist.) or even moving stuff from one rented room in a shared house to another could be achieved with those durable, colour contrast bags and I still have a few of them dotted around in the loft for storing other long forgotten treasures.

Once I became a mum, my clothing choices became less about body-con style and more about breastfeeding functionality and I stopped shopping at Jane Norman. But I was still oddly sad to hear of its collapse on the news in 2011 and, whilst it limped on for a little under the ownership of The Edinburgh Woolen Mill, seeing the empty retail units where there used to be buzzing excitement of seeing what was new in gave a sad wave of nostalgia for a version of myself I would never be again.

Because Jane Norman represented far more than just a fashion retailer. For women like me, it meant independence, it meant discovering and expressing ourselves. It meant friendships, found family, first kisses, drunk dancing and a sense of hope and freedom that only being 21 and wearing a gorgeous outfit you paid for yourself can give you. It had a kind of magic that I am not sure anybody will ever get from a Temu order, and I miss it.