Fashion Victim: Asda’s new offering doesn’t work for me

Jan 24 2008 by Emma Johnson, Liverpool Daily Post

SO ASDA has finally gone and done it. After bringing out cheap as chips wedding dresses and frocks which can make you cool like Coleen for under a tenner, the supermarket giant has launched an outfit for work that costs a fiver.

Yes, a fiver. Until February 26, if you buy a pair of their black boot-cut trousers for £5, you get a white shirt absolutely free.

According to the guys at George – Asda’s soaraway success clothing label – these two items make the perfect combination for work wear.

Well, maybe they are if you work in a restaurant or want to be mistaken for a prison warder.

Asda says it has based its conclusion on a survey of 1,000 women who said they wear these items on average three times a week.

What? I don’t know anyone who comes to work in a white shirt and black tailored (actually, that could be offensive to tailors) trousers with a perfect crease ironed down the front. That is because not only is such an ensemble hideously unfashionable, but shirts and trousers have to be ironed forever before they are fit for public viewing.

A straw poll of the women in my office reveals that work outfits are generally chosen on the grounds of fashion, comfort and time required at the ironing board.

Also, how many women do you know who wear the same outfit to work three times a week?

Asda say they can make the outfit so cheaply, not because they have children chained to sewing machines in the Far East – they operate a zero-tolerance policy on abuse of workers – but because they buy material by the mile, rather than the yard.

But, having seen Asda’s new offering up close myself, I am rather unimpressed: the shirt looked like the sort of thing you used to wear at school, and the trousers were distinctly shiny.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not being a snob here – I love a bargain and was slapping myself on the back last week when I marched out of Primark with a bag bursting with clothes having parted with less than £30.

I am also, as friends will attest, one of Asda’s biggest fans, and the George label can be found in dozens of my work outfits. When it comes to cheap, disposable workwear, I think the designers for George are geniuses.

Among the gems I have unearthed, when supposed to be shopping for bread and milk, are a skirt people assume came from Vivienne Westwood and a divine Princess coat that you would swear came from Marc Jacobs’s 2007 collection. I think this latest outfit has about as much chance of being mistaken for designer gear as Britney Spears does of being awarded Celebrity Mother of the Year.

George’s brand director, Fiona Lambert, tells us that the George formal wear team behind it believe that all women “can feel empowered and project a professional, competent look at the office”.

Well, of course we can. Just not in this outfit.