A Week in Next Clothing Confirmed My Darkest Suspicion: It Is Always 1997 and That's Fine

Let me be clear about something before we begin. I went into this experiment expecting to suffer. I am a person who reads System Magazine and has opinions about the Margiela archives. I own one genuinely impractical coat. I am, in the parlance of people who would never shop at Next, 'into fashion.'

Seven days later, I am sitting in a straight-leg chino the colour of a digestive biscuit, a relaxed-fit Oxford shirt that could have been purchased in any year between 1994 and now, and a pair of loafers that Next describes as 'classic' and I would describe as 'absolutely correct.' I feel nothing but calm. It is deeply alarming.

Next has done something to me. I think it might have done it to Britain, too.

What Next Actually Is, For Those Who've Forgotten

Next is the UK's most quietly dominant high street retailer, a brand so thoroughly embedded in the national fabric that most people forget it exists until they need a work trouser urgently and can't face the existential chaos of ASOS. It is not aspirational in the way that Reiss pretends to be. It is not affordable in the way that Primark actually is. It exists in a middle zone — competently priced, competently made, competently styled — that functions less as a fashion destination and more as a reliable domestic appliance.

You don't love Next. You don't hate Next. You simply have Next, the way you have a boiler and a preferred brand of paracetamol.

The Next catalogue — and yes, it still exists, in both physical and digital form, with the same confident energy it had when it was being leafed through on kitchen tables in 1991 — presents its clothes with an assurance that borders on philosophical. These are not trends. These are not moments. These are garments, and they will be here long after the trends have gone, wearing the same expression they've always worn: calm, stone-coloured, faintly ready for a parents' evening.

Day One: The Chino Has No Beginning and No End

I started, as Next logic demands, with trousers. The straight-leg chino in 'stone' (there are also options in 'dark stone,' 'light stone,' and what I can only describe as 'the idea of stone') arrived promptly, packaged without ceremony, which is itself a form of confidence. There was no tissue paper. No branded envelope. Just a trouser, presented as a trouser, because that is what it is.

I wore them to a coffee shop. Nobody said anything. I wore them to a work meeting. Nobody said anything. I wore them to the sort of low-key dinner party where someone always makes a comment about what you're wearing and even that person said nothing, which is either a critique or a compliment so pure it has transcended language.

The chino asks nothing of you. It expects nothing. It simply is, in the way that a dry-stone wall simply is: functional, regional, oddly permanent.

Day Three: The Catalogue Confidence Problem

By Wednesday, I had added a Next knit (oatmeal, obviously), a shirt in a blue that the website described as 'chambray' but which my mother would call 'a nice blue,' and a jacket that exists in the specific aesthetic space between 'smart casual' and 'geography teacher who's let himself go a bit and is happier for it.'

What struck me, scrolling through the Next website to plan the rest of the week, was the sheer unflinching confidence of the copy. Other retailers hedge. They say 'effortless' and 'elevated' and 'a fresh take on the classic.' Next says: Straight Leg Chino. Machine washable. £32.

This is not a brand in conversation with fashion. This is a brand that heard what fashion had to say, considered it, and decided to continue selling the same shirt it's always sold because people keep buying it and they're not wrong to.

The Next catalogue model — and there is a specific Next catalogue model energy that is impossible to describe but immediately recognisable — does not smoulder. They do not gaze into the middle distance with fashionable ennui. They stand in a kitchen extension in Berkshire, looking like they've just come back from a walk and are about to put the kettle on, and they are fine. They are completely fine. They have a pension.

Day Five: The Unsettling Comfort Sets In

Something happened on Thursday that I wasn't prepared for. I got dressed in approximately four minutes. I looked, if not interesting, then at least correct. I did not think about what I was wearing at any subsequent point during the day. I had four thoughts about my actual work, two about what to have for lunch, and zero — zero — about whether my outfit was making a statement.

This is, I realised, the entire point of Next. It is not making a statement. It has never been making a statement. It is simply clothing the body appropriately for the occasion, which is what clothes were, technically, invented to do before we made it weird.

Next's core customer — and I say this with enormous affection — is someone who has, at some point in the last decade, consciously decided that they have better things to think about. They bought a house. They have a Labrador. They are very good at their job and they do not need a £340 Japanese selvedge jean to confirm this to themselves or anyone else. They want a trouser that fits, washes well, and comes in three leg lengths. Next provides this. The relationship is honest and it works.

Day Seven: I Have Become the Thing I Studied

By Sunday, I was wearing a Next quilted gilet over a Next roll-neck and I had, without noticing, begun mentally planning a second order. A navy version of the chino. Possibly the cord shirt. The website had a 20% off promotion and I found myself reading the terms and conditions with genuine interest.

This is how it happens. This is how everyone ends up with eleven stone-coloured items and a Next account they've had since 2006 and a curious absence of anxiety about any of it.

Next is not behind the times. Next correctly identified, sometime around 1994, that time is largely irrelevant to the project of getting dressed, and it has been vindicated every single year since. Trends come. Trends go. The straight-leg chino in stone remains, patient and eternal as a standing stone, waiting for us all to come back to it.

We always come back to it.

The gilet, for the record, is extremely warm. I have no further questions.