The more I spent, the more I hoped each purchase could fill that void inside me

Yes, the fashion industry itself has many issues but at its very best, it is an art form. And isn’t feminism, at its very core, about choice? asks Louise O’Neill

When I was a child, my grá for fashion veered towards the eclectic; a slash of bright red lipstick, cheap wigs in colours never seen in nature, ghoulish Halloween masks.

I had my own vintage trunk full of dressing up clothes — lace, feather boas, gossamer-thin summer dresses that my mother had worn to Greece and Spain in her early twenties, the fabric as faded as the photo albums of those same holidays.