Primarkable

I discovered by chance today that Primark are now selling woman's clothing up to a size 20. This takes me just inside their orbit and naturally I wanted to celebrate by purchasing something.

So I discovered-shopping in Primark is really hard. There is so much stuff and it's all budged together with none of the carefully edited lines that you might find in Jigsaw; and it is all so cheap: nothing I saw today after my first serious Primark browse was over £20, so it makes it difficult to choose what to go for. Also from a practical point of view the ladies size 20 was brand new in this week and not available in many stock lines as yet so I had to hunt for something wearable. In the end I went for the nautical look in this cotton/polyamide blend sweater, mine today for £8.

It's not bad, is it? Gold buttons on the shoulders and turn backs on the sleeves and,whilst the fabric is fine its not spit-through fine and the handling feel is not noticeably worse than other high street knitwear. 

Now that's I'm a fully fledged Primark shopper I can join the clamour of customers asking them to carefully monitor their ethical trading policies and support the redoubtable Mary Portas in her campaign to improve customer service in the "fast fashion" end of the retail sector. Although I have to say that "Gail" who served me today in the Glasgow, Argyle Street branch was most friendly. 

But perhaps the most relevant campaign should be for Primark to expand its size range way higher that 20. The blogosphere is way full of women looking for fashionable clothes in sizes above a UK 16 ( just look to your left for some links) and this is a market which a profit hungry seller like Primark should be going all guns to entice. So please support your local fast-turnover, multiple retailer and show them that selling in larger sizes makes good business sense.