When I was a teenager, I spent most weekends browsing the rails of my local Topshop. As with so many of us who grew up during the Noughties, it was my entry point to the world of fashion: from my trusty skinny Jamie jeans and skimpy floral jumpsuits to sequin party dresses, I wanted it all. There’s a reason why Kate Moss’s capsule collections for the high street brand, along with the Christopher Kane and Meadham Kirchhoff collaborations, remain collectors’ items to this day.
But this weekend’s Topshop relaunch also reminded me of my awful consumption habits during my late teens and early 20s. I’d usually come home with something during my weekly visits – and while some of the pieces may still be desirable now, the majority of them are not. Anyhow, my mum ended up donating most of my old Topshop collection to local charity shops after I left home – I dread to think where those pieces ended up, whether they were confined to a rubbish heap in Chile or washed up on the beaches of Ghana.
Even during Topshop’s glory days, there were warning signs that there was a dark side to all this consumption. I remember watching the 2008 BBC documentary Blood, Sweat and T-shirts and being horrified by the conditions of garment workers in sweatshops in India. I wish I’d quit fast fashion then – but the allure of constant newness at an affordable price proved too strong.
Of course, a lot has changed over the past decade. The Rana Plaza tragedy in 2013, which saw 1,138 people killed when an eight-storey garment factory complex collapsed in Dhaka, Bangladesh, opened the eyes of many to the unfathomable human cost of fashion. At the same time, increasing concerns around fashion’s impact on the planet led to the word “sustainability” entering the mainstream consciousness in 2019. Just a year later, Arcadia – Topshop’s somewhat ironically named parent group, owned by Sir Philip Green – went into administration. When Topshop was sold to fast fashion giant Asos, the retailer’s beloved flagship store in Oxford Circus was shut down.
.jpg)
That’s what’s made Topshop’s return, via an outdoor show attended by hundreds in Trafalgar Square, feel all the more jarring. As models came down the runway sporting faux fur coats, zebra prints and the aforementioned Jamie jeans, with the likes of Cara Delevingne, Adwoa Aboah and even London mayor Sadiq Khan sitting front row, it was almost like the past decade hadn’t happened.
It’s a view shared by Fashion Revolution’s head of policy and research, Liv Simpliciano. “When the world feels so heavy, brand comebacks of any kind are a shallow distraction,” she says. “The world is burning, garment workers are still denied a living wage while being on the frontlines of a climate crisis they did not create, and fashion’s carbon footprint is ballooning out of control. If the planet and the people who make our clothes are not better off, then what exactly are we celebrating?”
On the relaunched Topshop.com (a website I used to check daily), where there are 720 styles currently available to buy, it again feels like business as usual: dresses made from 100 per cent polyester, jumpers made from acrylic, and polo tops made from cotton blends. Even for items that are made from natural fibres, there’s no information about how the materials have been sourced – whether they’re organic, recycled or certified.
In an interview with the BBC, Topshop’s new managing director Michelle Wilson suggested that the higher price point reflects a more sustainable business model, and that the brand’s focus is “on the livelihoods of people within the supply chain that we partner with and also the environmental impacts of the brand”. But the brand has provided no details of where the items have been made and whether garment workers have been paid a living wage, although there is a note on the website to say that Topshop “expects our contractors and their employees to adhere to these principles as outlined in our Supplier Code of Conduct”.
Beyond that, there aren’t any details of wider sustainability or social responsibility policies on the website, although a spokesperson pointed me to Asos’s Fashion with Integrity strategy, which includes targets to reduce greenhouse emissions generated by the manufacture of Asos own brand products by 42 per cent by 2030, compared to a 2022 baseline, and a commitment to use more sustainable materials (although specific targets are not included in the report).
Still, the lack of transparency on Topshop’s own website suggests to me that sustainability in fact isn’t a priority as the brand comes back into the spotlight. This feels like a missed opportunity: a relaunch offers the perfect time to reintroduce the brand – bringing all the heritage and nostalgia that comes with it – while demonstrating a better way of doing things. “We need a big brand to make a brave change, to be the leader that others will follow,” Orsola de Castro, fashion campaigner and creative director of Estethica, says. “It would have been so amazing if they had.”
De Castro notes that Topshop previously did have a Reclaim To Wear line, made from leftover materials recuperated from factories in the UK and Turkey, while I have fond memories going through the vintage rails in the basement of the Oxford Circus HQ. These may have been small initiatives in the grand scheme of things, but it suggests that the retailer was thinking about sustainability long before it became mainstream.
For Topshop’s comeback to be truly successful, sustainability has to be taken seriously – it’s no longer optional. “The real opportunity isn’t in going back, it’s in building forward,” Anna Woods, former Topshop buyer and founder of Positive Retail, reflects. “Topshop could be leading a vital conversation, showing transparency, committing to better sourcing, and putting the people who make the clothes front and centre. That’s how you align profit with purpose.” Until then, I’ll be searching for those Christopher Kane dresses over on my favourite second-hand websites.