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Yes, I want the J Brand Love Story jeans, but I would like them to be the jeans for more than a blink of an eye. I would like this to be a moment to savour, not a pit stop on my weekly fashion sweep, one eye furtively checking around for the next must-have style.

The first tremor of trend exhaustion hit me a few months back in Hennes, as I tottered toward the checkout, laden with garments, from Abigail’s Party chiffon tops to white skinny jeans. I looked down at my potential spoils and thought: what is this stuff but a lot of random trends? The question wasn’t, do I need this? (Go there and you’d never buy any fashion again.) Or even, does the planet need this? (Although it should have been.) It was, what has this gorging on trends got to do with loving fashion? What the hell are we doing?

This is how big changes start, with occasional, small pangs of anxiety and discomfort. This time last year, we didn’t know what a carbon footprint was; now, we’re switching our televisions off standby and turning our washing machines to 30 degrees.

And it’s not just me who is feeling chronic trend fatigue. Look around and you will find people in the public eye rushing to distance themselves from the ever-faster turnover of fashion.

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An emotional connection with clothes

Take Topshop’s former brand director Jane Shepherdson, who is now almost as famous for leaving the company and predicting a backlash against fast fashion. Hers was a criticism of the culture we live in, where clothes are out of fashion in a matter of months and we are discarding trends so quickly that charity shops can no longer cope with the turnover.

As the television shopping guru Mary Portas says, “When the charity shops are turning stuff away, that’s when you know something is wrong.”

What we are discovering is that people need an emotional connection with their clothes. We thought the buzz of refreshing our wardrobes every 30 days was a substitute for the old “fall in love, have to have, finally get, wear to death” routine, but we were wrong. The pace, driven ever quicker by celebrities, is way too fast, which means we barely have time to get to know our clothes before we’re on to the next haul.

“Even the handbag of the season is a bit bad taste now,” Portas says, “as in, ‘Oooh, you spent that?’ Suddenly that’s a bit naff. People are starting to look for labels that have a design integrity and an emotional connection with the consumer — and that can mean any number of things.”

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The future heirloom

Naturally, the quick-fix high-street bargain still has its place, but the focus has switched from smart skinting to buying good-quality clothes with staying power — what fashion insiders are calling “future heirlooms”.

Style’s fashion editor Sara Hassan says: “This is about a new mood. People want pieces that you can love and grow with. Take the classic biker jacket. It’s now more chic and savvy to buy a soft, buttery leather version from a classic designer label, rather than the manmade knock-off from Primark (the UK budget retail chain).”

Mandi Lennard, who heads up her own PR company and is the force behind the East End’s fashion movement, is quite clear about what is going on: “We are over these high-street trends. You just bin them every couple of months, and it is a horrible way of behaving. That is why people are going back to the good-quality, lasting article from the luxury fashion houses. I would hate to say they are investments, because I don’t think fashion works like that any more, but when you open a lovely trunk or a handbag... it is about a feeling of wellbeing, in a way.”

While Portas thinks it is environmental awareness that is nudging us away from the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it trends, Lennard believes that the need to take more time over our wardrobes has a sociological dimension.

“People are unsentimental now, so clothes that are being passed down don’t exist. Parents split up; people move around and can’t take things with them. So, it may sound sad, but clothes that you cherish and keep are filling that gap.”

Putting the love back into fashion can mean stepping off the rollercoaster and shopping more carefully and less frenetically. Or it can mean buying clothes that aren’t so aggressively trend-based.

Lucinda Chambers is a consultant for Marni, which she describes as “the antithesis of those labels that move the goalposts every season so the last collection is instantly redundant. Marni evolves gently, because that is how Consuelo (Castiglione, the label’s designer) wants to wear her clothes. She doesn’t want to be sick of the stuff she had three years back. When I buy a piece of clothing, I want to love it, and to be able to say I will love it when I’m 70. And I think that is the way more people are thinking.”

Chambers, who is also a fashion director at Vogue, sees the new success of pre-collections as evidence that women are tired of the switchback of trends: “Pre-collections don’t hit the catwalk — they don’t need the showstoppers — so they are not so extreme, and it is interesting that they have really taken over (roughly 70 per cent of the average designer’s turnover). The clothes are much more wearable and much calmer. They have the flavour of the designer, but in a gentler way.”

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We are not fashion puppets

Besides being impractical in the long run (“Buying a ton of clothes from the high street works out as expensive as a few items that add flavour to your wardrobe forever,” says Hassan), there is also something really dim about blindly pursuing trends, and not just because of the environmental implications.

Laura Bailey recently made a point of telling an interviewer she was sticking with a big Chanel bag she has had for the past three years. (“Now I am much more aware of buying things that I will have forever.”) And good for her.

But her decision probably wasn’t entirely conscience-driven. This is also about making the statement that you are an intelligent person, not a fashion puppet; that you know a good thing when you see it, not only when you are told it is a good thing until the next good thing comes along. That you know who you are, even.

When trends reach saturation point, the fashion cognoscenti have to stage a backlash. So now it is definitely cooler to have the fabulous Chanel bag from three years ago than to be matching your Hermes bag to your outfit (third change of the day) a la Victoria Beckham.

This time last year, owning the right wedges and the right flats and the right platforms and the right heels seemed the holy grail. Now it just seems part of the old-world mindset, before the global-warming penny dropped: greedy, all over the place and undiscerning.

“You know, the relentless cycle of trends is fun, particularly if you are young, and fashion relies on them,” says a fashion insider. “But it’s a bit like one-night stands: they may be exciting, but they don’t get you anywhere.”

Commitment-phobes beware. We could be looking at the end of a long period of rampant fashion promiscuity.

10 FUTURE HEIRLOOMS

Balenciaga blazer
Louboutin ankle boot
Chanel 2.55 bag
Dolce & Gabbana corset dress
Good fake-fur jacket
Military coat
Leather biker jacket
Tobacco pashmina
YSL tuxedo
Lanvin little black dress

Shane Watson
(The Times, London)

(Which fashion trend do you detest? Tell t2@abpmail.com)