The tao of TK Maxx

I doubt that Sir Keir Starmer has ever been inside a TK Maxx. I don’t see him, even in his early parliamentary days, hunting and rummaging for designer fashion, or trying on dozens of duds in a bid to find ‘the one’. We know the Prime Minister loves swanky clothes at the lowest possible price – and that’s TK Maxx’s raison d’être. But I don’t think he has the attitude required for shopping there.

It’s a pity because, with the right approach, TK Maxx can deliver great rewards. It has for me – calming my nerves when my personal life turned frantic and distracting me when the entire world seemed insane. It works as a tonic, I think, because TK Maxx shopping is an all-embracing activity requiring total concentration and commitment. While you’re at it, there’s no room in your head for worldly worries.

The stores are modern-day souks, choc-a-bloc with fast fashion tat, clothes cut in strange and abominable shapes, styles that never caught on. There’s so much junk, in fact, that it puts off the snobbish and faint-hearted. But there’s good stuff too – hidden in the chaos – and the job of the TK Maxx shopper is to become brilliant at finding it. You’ll fail if you don’t enjoy the thrill of the chase and if you don’t understand the required attitude – one of whole-heartedness and quiet determination.

There’s also a ritualistic element. You begin by working the rails, swiftly and serenely flipping hangers with your fingers, looking for superior fabrics. I like to do it while listening to gentle music on noise-cancelling headphones (there’s always a crying baby in TK Maxx); building up to an ebb-and-flow experience – the dismissal of 20 bad items, pausing at a ‘possible’, a rapid assessment and when a garment passes muster, dropping it into the plastic basket and moving on.

We TK Maxx connoisseurs check, all the while, for made-for-outlet trickery. The clothes that carry a fancy label but, quite obviously, would never grace the designer’s Bond Street shop. Often, they’re poorly made, the stitching is untidy and unfinished, the fabric is thin. A tell is that the item is priced low – but not marked down from some previous higher price. I’ve seen this on items by DKNY and Nicole Farhi – but there are many others.

It’s important to pace yourself and not to peak too early. Energy needs to be retained for the all-important trying on stage – when the treasures are proved genuine – hurrah! – or turn out to be horribly flawed. The whole process takes an hour or more and the prizes can be great. I have a pair of marine-blue Ralph Lauren chinos that have been favourites for nearly a decade, an adored Ralph Lauren cashmere coat that I bought for £99, and numerous soft James Perse t-shirts.

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When the cashmere lands, around this time of year, word spreads. If you’re clever and in luck, you can find pieces that surpass anything at M&S, John Lewis and Uniqlo. An absolute triumph was a four-ply oversized black cashmere high-necked sweater with a brand name that I didn’t recognise. It cost a quarter of the price it deserved. I wore it for years, until it finally succumbed to the moths.

For the most part, TK Maxx is about discovery and surprises. But it can be good for certain types of targeted shopping too – parties come to mind. When my sister needed to dress up as Tina Turner (work do), we found her the grooviest possible outfit – a satiny leopard-print mini-dress and massive brassy earrings, all for under a tenner.

While clothes are the main event, the other sections also offer treasure-hunting opportunities. I buy notebooks from the TK Maxx stationery section and have found Moleskine, Fabriano and Leuchtturm1917 at knockdown prices. Candles can be good, as long as you pay special attention to the ingredients, checking for nasties. Homeware occasionally turns up trumps. I have a beautiful tablecloth from TK Maxx, thick quality cotton, floral blue-and-white, which is perfect for summer in the garden.

Shoes though – not worth bothering with. For some reason, the rare finds are practically non-existent. Bras and underwear are too fiddly on the hangers, and everything is polyester. Bedding can be good; there’s generally some decent Egyptian cotton for sale. Kitchenware is tantalising. There’s a lot of it – but if you prefer stick and stainless steel to non-stick, and are boycotting made-in-China (the poor Uyghurs), it’s thin pickings.

I’m told the food can be OK – but it seems to me out of place in TK Maxx as it’s so much harder to tell the good from the bad when everything is in jars, bottles, packets and tins. And you can shop TK Maxx online – but that strikes me as having the same problem. You need to touch the stuff.

The whole point of the store is its sensory side. It’s all in the feel and the real-life physical judgements you need to make, along with the sheer amount of effort. I’m pretty sure that Sir Keir simply wouldn’t get it – even if he wasn’t busy with other, loftier things. Because shopping at TK Maxx isn’t for the strivers, the ambitious and the managerial. There’s nothing efficient or high-status about it. Instead, it’s for those of us who gain joy from small things. Happy little bargains. I’m hooked, and I’ve told my family that if I drop down dead in TK Maxx, they can tell people: ‘She didn’t mind. She died doing the thing she loved.’