CHANGING rooms are carefully designed to make you feel repulsed by yourself, the items you are considering buying, the whole concept of clothing and the world, it has emerged.

Along with maddening layouts and disdainful staff, the harsh overhead lighting is chosen to confuse, demoralise and shatter all self-esteem, making shopping less a leisure activity and more an existential assault on the soul.

Changing room designer Eleanor Shaw said: “We pick ultra-harsh light fixtures usually associated with evening sporting events and position them six inches above you.

“The resulting aggressive glare makes your semi-naked body look as dusty and cratered as the surface of the moon while casting shadows on your lined face that make you look at least a decade older.

“The longer you stand starkly

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