Fashion addiction: expensive clothes hid my loneliness – then I gave 90% of them away

Grief and pain lay behind my obsession with buying new clothes. Moving in with my fiance forced me to shed the material burden, and the persona I had been hiding behind

I was brought up with certain religious rules about what I could and could not wear - no bare arms, no bare legs - and, as a teenager, I longed for the sort of outfits I wasn't allowed. Once, on a shopping trip to Birmingham with school friends, I tried on halter necks, short skirts and flimsy summer dresses in the Topshop changing rooms, just to see how they looked. I remember the wild excitement, gazing at a reflection that didn't seem like me. I suppose this was the first time I realised that clothes meant I could pretend to be someone else.

At university, my friends nicknamed me Fashion, because I was always buying new clothes. I had a weekend job at a bookshop and saved my meagre wages to purchase entire outfits: shoes, tops and bottoms, all chosen to be carefully put together in a way that I hoped looked effortless. I loved the way it felt when I received a compliment about my clothes.