The big Topshop 'relaunch' is making my brain ache
How can we be nostalgic for something that has existed in our oh-so recent past?
What was your favourite Topshop purchase back in the day? Last week, that question was all over my Instagram feed: asked to stylish celebrities in vox-pop video interviews, and posed to mindless scrollers like me to fuel engagement. People came back with the same answers: mentions of “Joni”-style skinny jeans, statement jackets, or Kate Moss’s limited edition collection for the real cool kids. Put to men, they’d usually mention those hideous, brightly coloured Topman henley t-shirts with the contrast trim. You know, the ones teenage boys everywhere were obsessed with in the 2000s and early 2010s? The comments were met with the same excitable response: “God, I remember that too!”
Topshop’s big “relaunch”, with their first catwalk show in seven years in Trafalgar Square, prompted this line of questioning. Given the central London location and the starry attendees, with Cara Delevingne and Adwoa Aboah sitting front row, the coverage wasn’t all that surprising. Yet all this corresponding enthusiasm about Topshop’s so-called return made me feel like my brain had turned into some kind of syrup and was about to gloopily trickle out of my ear. I couldn’t believe – still can’t – how quickly we’d accepted the narrative that this is something worth reminiscing over. Most style publications these days are pretty outspoken about the damaging impact fast fashion is having on the planet. But the thirst for Topshop 2.0 felt like they were celebrating the return of something that never really went away, and, in turn, shorter and shorter trend cycles. Yes, Topshop went into administration in November 2020… but it was bought by ASOS just two months later. Yet all this marketing around the new version worked on me! Seeing these posts, I couldn’t help musing over my own former Topshop loves too, just like they wanted me too.
It’s not exactly headline news to comment on society’s state constant nostalgia, from Gen Z’s obsession with Friends and The Office to the comeback of capri pants (a trend I took one look at and immediately vetoed for myself – I was traumatised by pedal pushers enough the first time around, thank you). She’s a powerful marketing tool, nostalgia, and clothes are a really easy way to evoke those misty-eyed memories. Topshop was undoubtedly a big part of my childhood, as it was for many teens. Saving up to shop there felt like a first foray into adult life, and was experienced initially through deals on socks and vest tops (mostly for the Topshop shopping bag, a status symbol in its own right), before graduating to bigger, “investment” purchases.
But when I think about Topshop, I don’t see it as a long-lost part of my past. It is something that has existed, even in physical form, recently. Should I have wanted to access it online, I could have. I know “old Topshop” is having a moment on sites like Vinted and Depop, with Effy Stonem-obsessed teens seeking out our hand-me-downs. But let’s remind ourselves of something: Topshop closed their flagship Oxford Circus store in 2021. That’s 2-1. We’re not talking about some Y2K brand that faded out in the mid-2000s. I reiterate: you could visit the Big Topshop four years ago. When we buy into the narrative that we’ve all been sat around pining, longingly waiting for its return like Rapunzel in her tower, we are giving the brand permission to try and sell us more shit in the name of nostalgia.
I realise this might sound like the trailing off cry of a desperate woman yelling: “No, wait! I’m still young! I swear, I sweeeeeeeear!” Given the sinking feeling I experienced on a recent in-and-out trip to Westfield Stratford when I realised that I hadn’t heard of half of the shops there, it’s a fair assumption. But I find the idea of being nostalgic about Topshop so strange because I still own and regularly wear clothes from Topshop – ones I purchased, in person, from their shops. I’m not hanging onto them because they’re collectors’ items or I have some nostalgic connection to them. I just wear them regularly enough to warrant keeping them, and know I will likely want to wear them in the future.
That isn’t some holier-than-thou statement. Historically, that’s how people have always treated clothes, even if it’s not how we’re encouraged to in 2025. True, the items I hung onto, where others were passed on, are more staples than trendy pieces: a boxy striped t-shirt, a burnt orange boilersuit, a vibrant zig-zag suit I have worn for both job interviews and theatre press night parties, and will likely crack out at weddings in the future. Some of the trends have gone, then come back around again. When aviator jackets made their return last winter, I still had the faux-shearling Topshop version I’d hoarded my Christmas and birthday money to buy (I reckon circa 2012/3??), and celebrated, the item allowing me to try the trend without buying anything new. Most things were far less timeless, but the clothes I’ve kept hold of are in fairly good nick. They’re not vintage, as Depop sellers would market them, but simply clothes I wore then and still wear now.
Of course, it’s important not to be revisionist here. Topshop might have had that cool girl edge, but it was always fast fashion, and often fairly badly made. It was never size inclusive, and as Felicity Hayward pointed out in the British Vogue Instagram comment section, the new range still only caters up to a UK 16/18. Don’t let the slightly-higher-than-H&M-or-Primark price point fool you; Topshop was consistently called out for poor transparency around the pay and working conditions in its factories back in the day. But in comparison to the ultra-fast fashion clothes on sale now (seemingly designed with the express intention of being worn once and going straight to landfill), Topshop feels like expertly crafted haute couture.
When I sift through the shoddily made clothes from Shein, Boohoo, and even Zara that clog up charity shops now, I can’t help but wish they were closer to Topshop’s quality. That’s part of the reason why Vinted users seek it out; it’s better made than the fast fashion currently on the market. Shein adds approximately 2,000 items to its website every day, making it an obvious and easy villain for fashion influencers and publications to rightfully criticise: for the way it is damaging the environment, treating workers and encouraging of hyper-hyper-capitalism. But the fervorous chatter about Topshop’s big return forgets that it, too, has always been a fast fashion brand with shady ethics.
The cynic in me has to hand it to Topshop; this “relaunch” is an incredible feat of marketing. What I’m (perhaps naïvely) surprised by is how quickly this narrative has taken hold. Magazines and social media accounts I follow covered the London show last week with feverish excitement, despite their usual scepticism of fast fashion. After hearing all these wistful memories about Topshop’s Joni jeans (despite the prevailing narrative that skinny jeans have been, and remain, out), I had a look at ASOS. There are 3,945 Topshop pieces on the site right now, 14 of which are different Joni jean styles. This brand is being spoken of like a school friend you lost contact with after you both left home, but it’s still here. I’m not sure it ever went away.
There is so much to say about fast fashion and trends and overconsumption and poisonous, unregulated clothing and the idea that we “deserve to have nice things” more than workers deserve to be paid for them that I cannot even begin to touch on here. This is more a selection of quickfire thoughts about a random, widely covered fashion show that I can’t stop uneasily thinking about. Reading about Topshop’s grand return, I reiterate to myself that nostalgia is a powerful marketing tool, and that it’s being directly tapped here to sell me stuff. I don’t have to sigh as I think about my old Topshop pieces, seeing them as portals to the past and a sign I should consider purchasing from this new collection too. I don’t have to buy it, and I don’t have to buy into it.
Great piece. I just wrote about my experiences working at their Oxford Circus store. I have no real desire for Topshop to return, as you said it's never gone away for people who want to find it