SAVE any tears you may be shedding for New Look, the high street fashion chain which last week announced it would be closing stores. I mean, fine, worry about the 980 people who are about to lose their jobs. They lose their livelihoods, we just lose one of our many means of getting some cheap t-shirts and throwaway frocks. New Look, an early adopter of cheap fast fashion – the ability to get celebrity and catwalk inspired designs out on the shop floors quickly – is hardly a cultural presence any of us should be crying over, even in this moment of Brexit economic uncertainty.

Indeed, no cheap fast fashion outlet is worth the tears. For these are the emporiums responsible for turning us into a society which buys a shirt one day, then throws it in the bin a few months later because we can’t be bothered to wash or repair it, or are bored. These are the retailers who, with the help of us, have created an industry that is not only bad for the planet, but has little regard for those employed making its products.

As author Lucy Siegle wrote in her book To Die For: Is Fashion Wearing The World Out?, the real problem wasn’t just fast fashion – it’s "fast" allied with incredibly low prices. And, she pointed out, the real pioneers of that were the “value” retailers or “discounters” – Matalan, Peacocks and New Look. “The discounters,” she wrote, “persuaded us to trump all other values with a single question: "But is it really, really cheap?"

Fast fashion, of course, has only got faster and cheaper with the rise of online shopping, and it’s not surprising if those businesses that have physical stores are starting to suffer. For, online retailers are the real winners in the "fast" race that may end up turning our town centres into a place of nothing but boarded up shops and tumbleweeds. New Look at one time was admired for its ability to turn around an outfit from a celebrity, or the catwalk, in ten weeks. online retailer Boohoo can do the same in two.

According to a report by marketeers Hitwise, fast fashion had grown by 21% in the last three years. New Look was among the three most popular brands. The biggest growth, however, was seen by PrettyLittleThing, an online store that that works hard at forging relationships with celebrities.

The death of fast fashion on the high street is almost inevitable. For online shopping is far more convenient for a selfie-obsessed culture in which people see their celebrities or friends in an outfit one day, and want it the next.

I see it in friends. You’re sitting having a drink with them and you’re wondering what they are doing, and actually what they are up to is browsing for fashion. And I get it. The clothes are hard to resist, because you no longer need even to be walking the high street, in order to be snagged by desire. Satiation can be immediate.

We know the high street is changing – it has been for many decades. Some changes, should be welcomed. What gets people out of their homes and off their screens is a desire to participate in community, to feel connection to the makers of the products. That’s the high street that we need to nurture. Fast fashion of the New Look type really doesn’t have a place there. It belongs online.

Of course I, for one, would rather it didn’t have a home anywhere. I'd rather we all went back to buying fewer items, and taking care of them. For me it’s not about the high street versus online. It’s about how, in all these spaces, we best manage to create connection with those who make and produce. Slow fashion. That's should be the mantra, anywhere.

BOXER BARBIE: A REAL LOW BLOW

I'M not sure that there’s much that Mattel’s Barbie people could do for International Women’s Day that wouldn’t make me feel that they’re just using female empowerment as a cynical marketing ploy to sell us more plastic. But, perhaps the Nicola Adams doll was it. The boxing champ was just one of fourteen women, including Frida Kahlo and Ameila Earhart, that the doll manufacturer chose to “honour” by making them into a doll in their “Shero” range.

I can see how this is some sort of a step forward. Better, anyway for those kids of all different shapes and sizes and colours around the world than the blonde, ridiculously proportioned creature my generation had to play with. Better to be playing with characters who have done something in the world.

But, at the same time, this is still Barbie. The shape of her body, ludicrously-slim, isn’t anything like Adams’ physique. Entertainingly, the boxer’s key comment on the design was: “It even has my hair cut!” And distinctive as Adams’ cut is, it’s not what marks her out. What won those boxing matches for her were those rippling abs and taut biceps. If Barbie really wants to encourage young girls to be athletes, then they should be delivering them real athletes bodies.

Yet, even if they did, I’m not sure that would be the answer either. For, what girls need is not more dolls. There are more than enough of those. What they need is for female sports to be properly valued and celebrated. We need to cheer Adams herself, not her doll.