Disposable clothing - I think, girls, that it's our fault

I braved the centre of our town on Sunday although it still goes against the grain to shop on that particular day of the week. I guess you could call me old-fashioned. The object of my quest was boots. A pair of large – my feet are very large – low boots with a small heel; you know, the ones that you can tuck your jeans into.

What I discovered in every shop in town – bar one which had absolutely nothing in the style – was plastic shoes. Hardly a hint of leather anywhere. No, it was plastic shoes and boots with ridiculously thin soles and looking unlikely to last a week, let alone a month or 36. I normally keep my shoes for years – well I have to with my feet, because large shoes are so hard to come by.

This plastic disposable footwear lark got me thinking. It's us, the women of the western world, who are responsible in the main for the current trend of disposable possessions. We are culpable. We are probably most to blame for for the landfill, for the carbon emissions, for the Kamikazi nature of the modern world. Think about it. Disposable fashion clothes. What a terrible terrible waste. And the worst thing of all is that our eastern cousins think our way of life is something to be desired.

Yes, we’re back into buying small lumps of nylon or polyester which, if you put a match to them, would immediately sizzle into a small plastic lump. Do you remember those heady days of synthetic fibres – the early days that is? It was so exciting. Crimplene in all its glory served us well. But we advanced beyond that. But now it’s back with a vengeance. Cheap nasty clingy stuff, thin, no warmth at all, without an ounce of style, pulled tight and stretched in furrows of tension past mounds of over-ample bosoms. It’s not even very attractive.

It’s not men that shop this way is it? OK, men might follow fashion to a certain extent but it’s not men who undertake retail therapy. (I would also hazard a guess that it’s generally not men who pick most holiday venues in far flung corners of the globe, necessitating air travel, but that’s another topic.)

So there we have it, China, labouring under its pall of pollution is churning out millions of these pieces of tat – clothes and shoes. We women wear them a couple of times and then consign them to the charity shop or Freecycle them with a smug feeling of satisfaction that we’re doing the planet a favour, whereas in fact we are doing quite the opposite.

When the history of the 2000s comes to be written what will they say of us girls?