Bags for life

They rebuilt the Tesco’s in my home town last autumn: and now all of Winchester can enjoy the benefits of a fifty-foot meat and deli counter, an in-store optician’s, and more varieties of orange. Not that I buy them, they clash with my clothes, and I’m a glamorous fashion-blogger dammit, and orange is, like, so to’ally last decade. I will stick to my principles even if it means scurvy.
Butter, ‘Mocha Creme’ and Yoghurt are apparently all the rage for afternoon-wear though, so pop down to your local supermarket to get some colour inspiration. And while you’re there, take in the long aisle of tempting, seductive seasonal men- and womenswear behind the counter: check out… the check-out. It’s a shattering moment in any young man’s life when he wakes up one morning and discovers that shopping bags can be worn. Luckily for me my parents used to carry me around in them and occasionally leave me in Woolworth’s so I knew all about it from an early age. You take an ordinary plastic bag, cut out the bottom, and just like that it is transformed into a very fetching statement-croptop-wifebeater. Waterproof. Department-store shopping, always a drag, becomes a delight when you decide to throw away whatever you’ve bought and search for an innovative way to wear the bag you bought it in. The age of polythene has begun!
And so, to wrangle over this latest trend, I have invited the one and only Milo Raval, fashion-blogger to the stars, to judge – for the time has come for us to set aside conventional clothing, stretch on some recycled plastic and compare the results. May the best supermarket win!

TESCO

Milo writes: ‘‘I love the clean lines and the simplicity of the colours. Very naive, playful, but in a self-conscious way. It has unethical multinational corporation written all over it, but it’s a corporation run by sweet and misguided primary-school kids. It’s twee. Twee is going to be big. This is going to be big. I would definitely wear it out, maybe even to fashionable London bars and clubs like Dalston Superstore and Tesco Disco. Oh! and it’s biodegradable too.’’

MARKS AND SPARKS

‘‘This bag oozes confidence. It’s like it’s saying ‘it’s OK to be more than averagely middle-class, as long as you have it written all over you’ – which is a sentiment one hears so seldom nowadays. Not exactly one for the party scene; the fine detailing and subtlety of tone would be lost on the Eurotrash. But I would definitely wear it to dinner, maybe not with the queen, but certainly if I had some slightly less middle-class friends coming round and I wanted to impress them. And make sure they knew exactly where their food was coming from.’’

SAINSBURY’S

‘‘Orange!’’

The Sainsbury’s bag: not fit to be worn this season, except by bikes.

In Withnail and I they were worn as rubber boots: now they’re fashion items. How are you going to reuse your plastic bags?

Photography: Julius Zwirner
Models: Mstislav Szyrowski, Adalberto Gui
Styling: Cortina