We entirely and wholly support Selfridges' policy change

We do this not as a commercial endorsement you understand - we suspect that any such from us would have little value anyway - but to make the important policy point that it is revealed preferences that matter, not expressed.

Selfridges must embrace changes in shopping habits that have pushed ethical and environmental concerns to the front of the queue, according to the department store’s boss.

The upmarket store group, which recently cut 450 jobs after a tough year, is introducing clothing rental, a second-hand fashion shop, beauty pack recycling and a “concierge” to help organise product repairs as part of a five-year sustainability plan intended to adapt to new ways of living.

“I think the pandemic has changed everybody’s thinking forever,” said Anne Pitcher managing director of Selfridges as she launched the department store’s Project Earth five-year sustainability plan.

We hear much about how consumer tastes have changed. Which may well be true and if they have then we hope, fervently, that they are met. We are less happy with the insistence that since consumer tastes are claimed to have changed therefore every retailer, perhaps the entire economy, must be changed. For that second smacks more than a little of projection of their own views, by those who hold those views, upon everyone.

Now that Selfridges is offering these claimed to be desired things we can find out whether they are actually so desired and in what quantity, with what fervour. If they’re a profitable success then others will no doubt copy them and there will be no need for legal or regulatory insistences. If they’re not then we’ll have tried it and found out that this isn’t in fact what some sufficient number of people desire.

All of which shows that great glory of a market based economic system. By offering alternatives to suit every taste we find out what it is that people actually do want rather than what current fashion has them parroting what they think they should want. That is, a market system insists upon people walking the walk rather than merely talking.

“This is now available, how many want it?” is the great testing method of that market economy. There’s also no other manner of finding out what it is that people really do desire.