It was Saturday morning last week, and I was getting coffee outside my office building when I saw Sarah, one of the stylists I know from fashion weeks and industry events. She was unloading two giant Primark bags and looking mildly guilty as we passed each other outside our workplaces. “You’re not judging me, are you?” she laughed. “I just got twelve pairs of tights because you’d pay £10 for one decent pair somewhere else.” Fair enough. I shop at Primark despite working in fashion for reasons like this.
When something’s objectively priced lower for a reason that actually makes sense, I’m all over it. That said, every person I know who works in fashion has their own Primark vices. We don’t tend to advertise these things because there’s an unspoken stigma in the industry about acknowledging that sometimes, the version that costs £3 does exactly the same job as the £30 version.
Here are mine. Mine are their seamless underwear.
Like, way too many.
But here’s the thing: If you wear tailored trousers or close-fitting dresses to meetings and conferences all day (hello, life in fashion), you need seamless underwear.
These £2.50 pairs work exactly like the fancier seamless underwear I own, but I don’t cry when they inevitably disappear in the wash like I do with my pricier ones (thank you, building washers and dryers). Similar to my friend Emma’s weakness for their plain cotton underwear.
She loves their multipacks before big business trips. “If you’re running around fashion week doing shows for twelve hours straight while wearing skyscraper heels, you don’t want luxury underwear riding up your hips or digging into your back,” Emma explained over drinks last month. Makes sense! When you’re working during fashion week, comfort is key.
But this tights dilemma is where it gets juicy. I’ve watched fashion people scroll straight past Primark’s selection of stripe-y, leopard print tights and head to the plain black options every.single.time. Here’s the thing: They’re right to do that.
I did a personal side-by-side test with my normal expensive brand and didn’t notice a difference in quality. But when you need five or six pairs of tights in your suitcase “just in case” during a work trip (because they always run when you NEED them to NOT run), £15 per pair adds up quickly. My male coworker James’s obsession with their plain black socks.
He keeps a drawer of their plain black multipacks at work specially for men’s fashion shoots. “Models show up wearing crazy socks that might not work with the outfits we’re shooting,” James told me. “So I stockpile plain black socks that look as luxe as the expensive ones but are actually from Primark.” Smart man. I’ll be honest, their pyjamas are pretty good. Not the Paw Patrol or Funko Pop ones, though.
Their plain cotton pj sets are surprisingly great. I bought a few on airplane flights after my normal expensive ones were destroyed in one too many hotel laundry bins and couldn’t recommend them more. They pack super small, you can wash them by hand in your hotel room bathroom if need be, and they’re thin enough that they’ll dry overnight.
They’re cheap, simple, and smell-adult instead of childish, which feels luxurious when you’re travelling for work. Fashion people are picky about what we’ll buy at Primark, though. We’re not stocking up on trendy-seasonal things that obviously look like budget versions of designer runway pieces, you know?
We’re talking basics basics. Plain white t-shirts, black leggings you can’t even tell are from Primark, that sort of thing. To that end: their plain white tees are life-changing.
At £2.50 a pop, they’re cheap enough that you don’t mind using them to layer under expensive blazers or wearing when you know they might get ruined. A few stylists I know stock up on them before fashion shoots to have extras on hand. My friend Priya, who styles magazine photo shoots, keeps them in every size. “When you need a plain white tee as a layer and they might get glitter poured on them or safety pinned to a model to cheque fit, you want something you don’t care about ruining,” Priya explained.
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Word. Spend a hundred bucks on a basic white tee from your favourite luxury brand and expect to wear it three times? No thanks.
Spend three pounds and don’t care if it gets messed up? You bet. PSA: Primark changing rooms are notoriously hectic and stressful.
I’ve yet to meet a fashion person who doesn’t have a whole “buy online and return the ones that don’t fit” methodology when it comes to Primark. Because the prices are so cheap, you can afford to buy two or three of the same item in different sizes and return what you don’t need. It saves fighting over a changing room and their return policy is pretty fair!
Their canvas trainers also become a weird industry favourite over the summer. Not so much for daily wear, but for certain shoots or things where you know you might only wear shoes once. Beach cover stories, holiday-y days, etc.
I swear by their plain black flip flops as backup nightmares during fashion week when my feet can’t take cute trainers anymore, and other people I know keep pairs in their work bags for days like that. Theirs basic camis and tank tops are another go-to. If you need something UNDER a sheer blouse to make it work appropriate for the office, or want to layer under a blazer, those £1.80 basics are perfect.
I think I own eight of their plain black strappy tops at this point. They hold up in washings, and when they inevitably get stretched out or stained beyond hope, it doesn’t hurt my wallet to buy more. Their basic hair supplies are clutch for hair emergencies.
More fashion people than I can count swear by these items from Primark: <a href=”https://camesawwore.com/fashion-editors-are-abandoning-this-major-accessory-and-what-theyre-wearing-instead/” target=”_blank” title=”Why American fashion editors are ditching this major accessory (and what they wear instead)” rel=”noopener noreferrer” data- wpil-monitor-id=”143”> Bobby pins, plain white scrunchies, and simple elastic hair bands. You always need a stock on hand when you work in fashion because you’ll lose half of them after one film shoot. I can’t tell a difference between their plain black bobby pins and the expensive (Marc Jacobs, Bella Haus) ones I’ll occasionally buy, but you better believe there’s a price difference!
Same thing with scrunchies and hair bands. When you could lose half your supply in one photoshoot, that matters.
We know what we don’t buy at Primark though: bikinis (too cheaply made), trendy things that obviously want to be designer garments, or trendy shoes beyond the sandals and trainers I mentioned above.
Primark trickles down high fashion well enough that if we’re buying from there, we want things that can’t be traced back to the real designer version.
Basics. We’re not paying more for basic white tee-shirts than we need to!
When Covid hit last spring, their plain white masks were lifesavers for industry people needing fresh masks every day at work. “I needed sets of clean masks every single day to run around in for showroom visits and meetings,” my friend Maya who does PR for fashion brands told me. “Because the masks were so cheap at Primark, I could keep enough on-hand to never run out of clean ones.” I’d be lying if I said most fashion people don’t walk into Primark with some sort of game plan every time we go in. Enter, buy what you need, leave. That means heading straight for the sections we need and getting the hell out.
Some of us even wear headphones the second we step inside to drown out the madness and shop with military precision. But working in fashion has also taught me when it makes sense to spend more money, and when it doesn’t. Sure, I’m willing to drop major coin on my Theory blazers and closet staples I’ll wear forever.
But for cheap underwear that has one job? Nope, I’ll happily snag those at Primark. Life’s too short and our closets are too full to waste money on things that don’t matter.
Make sense spend where we can.
