I don’t know what came over me.

It was October 29th, the day that Kanye West’s Yeezy collection was due to drop. (Though, rolling out of bed and heading to work, I’d completely forgotten that fact). By the time I was sat at my desk with my morning coffee, everything was sold out. Before long, an email popped into my inbox – one last website had just released their stock.

I clicked the link, and there it was, that camo t-shirt I’d had my eye on – and that was completely snapped up on every other site. Ok, so the price was massively inflated, and the shipping was extortionate, but it was in stock! I could add it to my basket and everything... it didn’t give me an error message when I put in my details, just to see... and then, in a few clicks, there it was: a confirmation. Oh god, I’d actually done it. In my giddy, sweaty-palmed race against the website, I’d just spent £250 on a camo t-shirt. That was going to be shipped from the other side of the world.

I felt a bit hot and guilty and confessed to my colleagues with my head in my hands. As one has kindly just reminded me, I told them it was an accident, which to be fair was kind of true – I was convinced I’d get an error message, like the other website I’d already tried that morning. Anyway, they were not sympathetic. I prayed my mum would never find out and returned to my desk like a guilty puppy. 

It was official: I had drunk the Kool Aid. After years of laughing at my friends who obsessively counted down the days until Supreme launches, I knew what that manic rush to buy a brand felt like, being overtaken by a desire to possess something, and wanting it more because there were other people desperate to own it too – the fact the t-shirt was sold out had only made me more determined to have it. After some serious introspection and consoling myself with the mini bottle of Prosecco that I was keeping on my desk for emergencies, I tried to cancel my order, but it was too late – it had already shipped.

Let me just say this: I know I am incredibly privileged to have enough cash in my account that I can impulsively drop a couple of hundred quid on something completely unnecessary. (If it helps, I lost about £60, aka half what I should have paid for the damn thing in the first place, on shipping and refund costs). I’m not looking for pity, or sympathy, or whatever. I’m just trying to work out how it was that I, a rational, thrifty person, had fallen into a hype-induced fugue state, tapping in my card details like I was desperate for a fix, the virtual version of those rabid shoppers in H&M scaling the shelves to snatch down discounted Balmain.

“I had fallen into a hype-induced fugue state, tapping in my card details the virtual version of those rabid shoppers in H&M scaling the shelves to snatch down discounted Balmain”

Although the fact that I am a massive Kanye fan certainly had something to do with it, this isn’t really about him – it’s about consumerism (which ironically enough, he’s been critical of in the past). It’s about the way that brands engineer themselves so that people want their goods – or even feel that they need them, that they won’t be happy without them. These items are just attainable enough that a lucky, determined few can buy into them, but exclusive enough that there will be queues around the block for them (and a big market on eBay within hours of them selling out, as happened with Yeezy Season 1). The thing is, I am not a 17-year-old Supreme fanboy, but somehow, this collection made me act like one. For the first time, I threw my ‘sensible shopper’ reputation to the wind, desperate to get a piece of the action rather than remain a curated lover of fashion that umm-s and ahh-s over vintage on eBay. If anything, it gave me something of an identity crisis.

When the t-shirt arrived I took it home and tried it on. It looked ridiculous, but staring at my reflection in the mirror, I could only laugh. It felt oddly appropriate that something that had made me behave so entirely out of character really did not suit or fit me at all. I shelled out another £15 to ship it back (turns out return postage wasn’t free...) and considered it something to learn from. Because while I didn’t need that t-shirt, I did need to be taught a lesson.