The long, hot summer, the Oasis reunion tour and ongoing cost-of-living pressures dominated shopping trends this year, according to John Lewis.

The UK’s warmest summer on record saw the usual spikes of fans, ice cream and outdoor furniture at the department store and its supermarket chain Waitrose but four major heatwaves led to record sales of swimwear as the traditional summer months waned, up 18% in September and 28% in October.

Outdoor cooking kit sales were still soaring in October too, up 42% on the same month in 2024, according to John Lewis’s 12th annual How We Shop, Live And Look report.

The summer also brought Oasis’s long-awaited Live ‘25 41-date reunion tour, setting off a boom in sales of parkas and bucket hats – up 40% in the first half of 2025 compared with the same perio

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