I love summer clothes shopping. Despite the changeable British weather, there’s something happy-making about snapping up a few breezy and colourful fashion pieces at the start of summertime.
It’s only right to dress the part. Shakespeare likened feminine beauty to a summer’s day, after all. But how to satiate those shopping urges when you have an August holiday to save for and two spendthrift teenagers off school for what seems like an eternity?
And so, we move from the Bard of Avon to the brightly lit fashion aisles of Asda, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Morrisons, because as Falstaff famously laments in Henry IV, “I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse.”
But seriously, supermarket own-brand clothing lines – among them F&F at Tesco; George, Studio Edit and G21 at Asda; Nutmeg at Morrisons; and Tu at Sainsbury’s, which also has Everbelle and For All The Love under its umbrella – are my secret weapon this summertime. This year, more than ever before, they’re a hotspot for cost-friendly, boutique-style treasures that trend-hop from power-casual to free-spirited folksy to airy elegance in a way that’s stylish, affordable and refreshingly unfussy.
“Our boho black tiered ric-rac trim dress is the new version of one that [fashion-editor-turned-Instagram star] Erica Davies loved earlier in the year. It has gorgeous billowy sleeves, is super forgiving and is only £26,” says Liz Evans, the chief commercial officer for non-foods at Asda.
The tiered minidress she was referring to quickly sold out after Davies featured it on her feed, proving that social media is helping to dismantle old stigmas associated with dressing in supermarket-bought designs.
You can believe the hype, because fashionistas who also buy from designer brands and premium boutiques are flocking to their local superstores to stock up on key holiday looks. Glamorous influencers Sarah Ellis and Philippa Ross are a case in point. Both in their 30s, the pair run London-based clothing label Wat The Brand and are best known for their fashion and lifestyle platform, We Are Twinset.
The pair recently posted a reel which shows them cooing over F&F Clothing co-ords as well as Tesco’s “super chic” swimwear collection and cream crochet beach trousers, a dead ringer, apparently, for a pair by Melissa Odabash. These style mavens are immaculately groomed; they swing Bottega Veneta handbags and bask in the peachy glow of a Shu Uemura skincare routine.
It just goes to show that trolley-dash fashion is going places: from the prosaic environment of a busy superstore to a luxury holiday destination for poolside posing.
According to Rachel Bines, the merchandise planning manager at F&F, the “matchy matchy” soft tailoring loved by Ellis and Ross has been a huge hit; “Since its initial drop in last month, the brand’s cream and black floral embroidered Cornelli co-ord has almost sold out, as has our matching beige and cream Schiffli shirt-and-shorts set,” she says.
So why should our supermarket fashion bargains be communicated in hushed tones as if their very existence is an unspeakable breach of fashion etiquette? Even Ellis and Ross whisper that they are “going rogue” as they enter Tesco’s fashion department. I’ve met many people who struggle with this: either they say it coyly as if they are asking for Imodium at the chemist’s, or conspiratorially as if they’ve found a fiver down the back of the sofa, slightly shifty and embarrassed about their “win”.
“A great deal of work has gone into refreshing our total brand look and feel this year – customer response has been unequivocally positive and we’ve seen some great year-on-year sales numbers across all of our channels,” says Asda’s Liz Evans, whose stats show that George clothing sales grew by 3.4 per cent to £1.5 billion in 2023 and that the business logs an average 260 million visits a year to george.com.
Whereas previously, supermarket style winners were almost exclusively sleuthed out by influencers as “dupes”, or affordable copies of things that were financially or geographically out of reach, own-brand supermarket clothes are increasingly becoming fashion desirables in their own right, and are being showcased as such. What’s more, it can now sometimes be hard to discern between a supermarket look and an ensemble several times the price.
Take Tu’s barrel-leg jeans. Since they first launched in February, they have proved so popular that the bow-legged silhouette now comes in a variety of colourways and has featured on the brand’s top 10 bestseller list for the past eight weeks. Gigi Hadid, Blake Lively, Katie Holmes and Julianne Moore have been photographed wearing this voluminous denim style in iterations from upscale labels, but fashion editors have raved about the Tu version, available for £22, with some saying they look as good as high-end designs by the likes of Frame, Agolde and Citizens of Humanity.
Can you spot the supermarket bargains in the looks below? Take our quiz and read my verdict on the items worth adding to your basket.