Changing room truths

The incident happened as I queued for the changing rooms at Zara, waiting to try on yet another jumpsuit in the hope that it would give me the insouciant air of Claudia Winkleman, instead of looking like a giant baby in a romper. I had six jumpsuits over my right arm and finally reached the front of the queue.

“Will you put them back on their hangers afterwards, please?” instructed the sales assistant. And I was so dumbfounded at this, so appalled at the implication, that I nodded wordlessly and walked to an empty cubicle, my mouth flapping like a fish. Do I look like the kind of savage who doesn’t put their clothes back on their hangers?

We all know such monsters exist. Sometimes you’ll come across a changing room in which there seems to have been some sort of coat hanger orgy. They’re scattered across the floor and swinging loose on several hooks. Often there’s an abandoned piece of clothing lying on the floor, too: something that you’d never be brave enough to try yourself. A peach pair of hot pants! Very avant- garde for Guildford.

But, in general, I’ve always slept easy in the knowledge that these people are few and most of us are sensible, law-abiding citizens who hang clothes up after trying them on. Until this sales assistant shattered my every belief (is the Earth even round?), and I decided I should address a few changing room truths.

First, if you’re a woman, well, hard luck. On top of the pay gap and jokes about your driving, you will always have to queue for a changing room. (I asked my boyfriend whether men ever queued for a changing room and he frowned and said he had “maybe once”. So that’s another thing to resolve when we overthrow our male overlords.)

Secondly, when you reach the front of the queue and tell the sales assistant how many items you’ve diligently counted while queuing to save them the hassle, he or she will insist on counting them again and you will have too many clothes to take in. This results in the fashion equivalent of Sophie’s Choice – do you take the white shirt to try with the jeans or the green skirt with the black top – and an awkward, half-naked dance back to the sales assistant a few minutes later to swap items over.

Thirdly, just in case there’s any confusion, you absolutely need to hang your clothes again after trying them on. The changing cubicle exists in that strange overlap of the public and private dimension, a bit like public loos, in which some people behave really quite revoltingly because they assume they can get away with it and someone else will tidy up after them. But that’s sloppy, and I’m sorry but even if you’re trying on 27 bras, you need to at least attempt to put them back on the correct hangers afterwards. You cannot leave the changing room and hand the poor assistant a pile of bra spaghetti. I know they’re fiddly. But have a go.

Likewise, if you have an item that doesn’t involve a hanger but that needs to be folded again, fold it. Scan the changing room floor before leaving it for anything you might have forgotten – shopping bags, jewellery, phones. My favourite thing to do is remove a fairly new pair of sunglasses from my head and leave them there.

Finally, when you leave the cubicle and have to hand everything back to the assistant, you need to look sad and apologise as if you’re at their mother’s funeral. “I’m really sorry,” you say. “So sorry.”

That’s exactly what I said, a solemn expression on my face, when I handed the six jumpsuits back to the zealous sales assistant in Zara because they all looked weird in the crotch area. She didn’t seem very impressed, even though I’d spent the past half-hour making sure they were all zipped up perfectly on their hangers. There’s no pleasing some.