Kathy Foley

I’m gutted. I never thought it would come to this. Even when the negotiations were pretty advanced I always believed that somehow things wouldn’t work out. No, of course I’m not talking about the formation of the new government. The cause of my distress is the news Ikea has got the go-ahead to open a store in Dublin.

As may not be obvious, I love Ikea. Few things in life give me more pleasure than leafing through its catalogue. Nothing beats the thrill of arriving at one of its enormous blue-and-yellow warehouses, salivating at the thought of filling my trolley with cheap picture frames and vases before flopping down to enjoy a plate of Swedish meatballs.

Ikea products look cool. They have endearingly cute Scandinavian names like Bubbla and Ribba. They’re cheap, too, almost too cheap. If there’s an easier, better-value way to make your home convey the idea that you’re a cosmopolitan European hipster, I’ve yet to find it.

By far the best thing about Ikea was that you couldn’t get the stuff here. Owning Ikea products was a wonderful way of signposting to visitors that you were a citizen of the world.

It didn’t matter if you bought the funky lampshades while visiting your aged Aunt Mary in Warrington for the weekend. Glossing over the reason for your visit you would casually remark to friends: “Oh those? Got them in Ikea. They have fab stuff and it’s sooo cheap. Pity there isn’t one in Ireland, eh?”

If, like me, your favourite hobbies include shopping, going abroad and petty onemanupship, Ikea was heaven-sent. If not, you’re probably horrified at my crass consumerism. Admittedly, not everyone is seduced by the bright lights of foreign chain stores, but most of us engage in some form of overseas shopping snobbery.

There are adherents of authenticity, for example, who always insist on searching out the most representative local crafts. A holiday is not a holiday for them unless they’ve spent most of it haggling with traders over ugly phallic sculptures or hideous multicoloured blankets.

If you admire their purchase when they return, they just shrug airily and say something infuriating, like: “Ah, the Bungan fertility symbol? I bought it from a Punan Bah tribesman in Borneo.”

In other words: “I am a modern-day adventurer with an incredibly exciting life, mostly spent in places you’ve never heard of. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it. Or stick it in my filigreed silver hashish pipe, which I picked up for a song in the souk at Marrakesh.”

The authenticity brigade has a well-heeled subset who wouldn’t dream of buying a grubby ‘ethnic’ throw and schlepping all the way home with it. No, they go off travelling to ferret out beautiful foreign antiques and curios, and have them shipped home, thereby cementing their status as people of wealth and taste.

This is a tradition steeped in history. Much of the point of going abroad has always been to bring back stuff with which you can impress your friends. Young members of the British gentry used to go off on the grand tour, which largely involved idling around Europe for months on end, but they always made sure to return with a few well-chosen objets d’art. The great explorers, the likes of Magellan and Drake, circumnavigated the world and came back laden with spices and assorted other goods that couldn’t be had at home.

Archaeological evidence indicates that the Vikings traded in Dublin with fabrics from as far away as Byzantium and Persia. I wonder if there was some 10th-century version of me turning up her nose at the new foreign fabric stall in the market: “I do like these Byzantine silks but ever since Leif the Redbeard starting importing them in bulk, it’s just not the same. Everyone has them nowadays.”

Now we must contend with a new Scandinavian invasion, one that will reduce Skruvsta chairs and Svalov tables from the gloriously cosmopolitan to the contemptibly mundane. There’s nothing especially impressive about buying cushions in a warehouse off the M50. Taking the Ballymun exit to do a bit of shopping will never appear on one of those “100 things to do before you die” lists.

There used to be two places for which I made a beeline once I arrived in a foreign city: Zara and H&M. Those were the days. You could buy a whole new wardrobe for half-nothing and, crucially, no-one at home would have the same clothes.

A friend and I once travelled to the Basque city of San Sebastian from the other side of the French-Spanish border specifically to go to Zara. We spent three hours in the store, bought as much as we could carry and got the bus back to France. Were we philistines? Probably. Shallow shopaholics? Certainly. Delighted with ourselves? Absolutely.

We weren’t alone. My favourite game at the baggage carousel in Dublin Airport used to be counting the number of women toting carrier bags from Zara. Not any more. People don’t bother shopping there while on holidays now the exclusivity factor is gone.

Right-on types may rail against the homogenisation of the high street, bemoaning the crushing of our quirky local retailers under the juggernaut of international commerce. I stand squarely with them. When you can buy the same clothes and home accessories here as anywhere else, how can you showboat to your friends and family?

Ikea? I couldn’t bring myself to shop there.