Welcome to the shopless shop, where customers pay for decisions to be taken out of their hands. Since 2014 the number of visitors to subscription shopping websites has grown by 800%. Customers receive a “curated box” of items of beauty products, clothes for work, even toys for their pets. The companies’ success (in the US they’re booming) lies in the surprise. Today, if you know what you want, you can buy it on your phone in a single click. If, instead, you simply want… something, the subscription box promises a personalised experience from the gift-ish unwrapping to the possibility that the contents inside will change your life. Could this be the future of shopping?

‘The package is like a bountiful dressing-up box’:

Priya Elan on men’s interests

Confession: I love things in boxes. Eggs. Tic Tacs. Matches can be fun. Bento boxes are my go-to choice at the Japanese takeaway. But clothes? The fashion delivery service the Chapar offers personal grooming via a cardboard rectangle. Once it arrives, you have five days to try everything, buy what you like and send the rest back. All you have to do is fill out a form and then a stylist will pick out a collection of algorithmed clothes, pop them in the box, et voilà: you can wear a whole new you and say things like “Et voilà” without regret. Possibly.

Masculinity can now be purchased via subscription. There are craft ales, shaving kits, socks, pants and even meat you can receive in the post every month. The latter (from Carnivore Club) comes in a big red box featuring vacuum-packed slices of cold meat you can presumably gnaw on while beating up some guys in a topless bar. This type of shopping is perfect for the time-stretched guy who balks at the idea of fingering Merino wool-silk-cashmere-blend jumpers in the local high street branch of M&S.

And in the era of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Topman personal shoppers, the idea of personal stylists isn’t quite as fantastical as it once was. But can the virtual personal shopper work? I speak to Lisa the Stylist, who asks me a series of questions about my style, which I try to sum up in three words. “Sporty/smart/gothy!” I email over like an excited puppy. I ask a friend if that description is correct. “You forgot ‘wanker’,” he suggests. Another asks “SPORTY?” (the caps are mocking, I think). “Asian goth has midlife crisis in Nike Town?” offers another. Can personal shoppers get you new friends? Mmm...

Lisa the Stylist is very helpful; she seems to know what she’s doing when I speak to her on the phone. “Sorry, I’m rambling,” I say at one point after I’ve done an incredibly detailed breakdown of my changing relationship with sweatshirts since 2005. “No, you’re not,” she says kindly. But I most definitely am.

The package arrives and it’s like a bountiful dressing-up box: three pairs of trousers, two coats, one pair of shoes and too many tops to count. Filled with labels such as Farah and Samsøe & Samsøe, and classic men’s style tropes (Breton stripes, strong denims and khaki greens), everything feels expensive to the touch and is wrapped up with dainty little bows.

As I try on the various clothing combinations, I feel like I’m in a makeover scene in a film about a repressed British man who can’t say “I love you” to the surly cook he has adored for 45 years. Despite the fact there are some great pieces here (I particularly have my eye on a navy coat), it is disappointingly not my style: it’s too luxe and too “graphic designer in his 40s goes to Lisbon on weekend break’’. But it’s quite a revelation in terms of ease. I absolutely think “box shopping” will revolutionise the way men shop simply because men hate shopping. And who doesn’t love a box?

‘I’d miss plodding round the shops with friends’:

Eva Wiseman on women’s fashion and accessories

‘You feel compelled to think about who you are, what you’re lacking, and who you dream of being’: Eva Wiseman’s hair and make-up by Celine Nonon at Terri Manduca. Photograph: Pal Hansen/The Observer

I don’t dress the way I think I do. It’s always a shock to catch a glimpse of myself in a dark window and see a rejected Grayson Perry character looking back. So, in theory, I should have jumped at an opportunity to “refresh my style”. But it sat under my desk for slightly too long, this box of clothes in muted shades of green and shame, and every now and then I’d kick it accidentally-not-by-accident. What was it about the idea of subscription shopping that I found so irritating? More than irritating; infantilising, neutralising – as if we were inviting all choice, all agency to be gently crushed, bug-like. And in the case of fashion, (an opportunity to reveal one’s true self through creative use of denim) almost dystopian in its promise of delivering a complete uniform to your desk, so you need never worry about such things as self-expression or the laugh of shopping ever again. Because it is a laugh, isn’t it? Sometimes? Perhaps it’s a nostalgic hangover from simpler times, but there was once joy in an afternoon spent plodding round the shops with two gossipy friends, and touching things, and imagining the kind of person you might become, should you ever be able to afford cashmere. I miss that. But I find a similarly meditative calm scrolling through Net-a-Porter, putting nice skirts into a basket I’ll never check out, the clothes-enjoyer’s version of bird-watching on a country walk.

The UK’s first jewellery-rental subscription company, Glitzbox, opened last year. Subscribers, paying £50, fill in a quiz (“How do you feel about rose gold?”) and receive three pieces a month. If they want to keep any they get £39 credit off the purchase – if not, they send them back. My box arrived, an elegant selection, and I became particularly fond of a gold-plated ring cast from a piece of bark (£85). But jewellery isn’t something I require as a monthly fix; it’s rare and special, selected by me or someone who loves me, rather than a stranger on the internet. I sent it back.

StyleLyrical – one of the UK’s only companies offering anything close to the glut of subscription fashion services available in the US, where a heavy marketing drive means they’ve spread across Instagram like a kind of rash – is somewhere in between an online shop and a styling service. It feels like the beginning of something, as if they’re groping the market in an exploratory way. You pay £29.99, and after a phone consultation they send you a Style Box – you can buy the pieces (tops are about £100, leather jackets £365), or return them the following week.

“How would you describe your style?” the online form asked, when I signed up. “Fifties mum with delusions of elegance,” I typed, then deleted, replacing it with, “Monster of comfort, belted in,” before deleting again. It was very difficult. You then get a phone consultation, which was unexpectedly emotional. About 13 minutes into a 20-minute interview about what you’re after from a box of new clothes, something shifts, and you feel compelled to think about who you are, what you’re lacking, and who you dream of being. Except, then the box arrives, and it’s like, a pair of elasticated slacks and two silky tops.

No, I’m being unfair. It’s clear I’m not who this is for. And the clothes are decent: let’s call them luxurious basics. I particularly liked one of the tops, with its wide sleeves and tied-up waist. I can imagine when a service like this might be handy, or rather, I can imagine being in such a state about starting a new job, or taking on a new identity – freshly single, for instance – when this could be good. A caring voice, asking you what you want, and really listening, and then dressing you, like a mother who loves you, could be life-changing. It could be brilliant, in fact, were it not for the limited selection. There is currently only one idea of a woman being presented here, in this slim collection of pieces available in their online shop (three jackets, eight dresses, seven pairs of trousers, some cardies); two, at most. Though they promise there’s more stock coming, even the greatest stylist would have trouble finding inspiration. My experience revealed I should perhaps be saving that £29.99 for an actual therapist.

‘Tissue-wrapped “hugs” in boxes’:

Suzanne Moore on self-care

‘I love unwrapping all these things that will make me feel happy and healed’: Suzanne Moore’s hair and make-up by Celine Nonon at Terri Manduca. Photograph: Pal Hansen/The Observer

Happiness is a warm box. Amazingly, though, pizza is not part of the self-care business. Now, instead, little boxes of healthy delight can be delivered to your door. You can even have some on subscription so you get regular feelgood packages.

This is why I am surrounded by boxes of stuff. Stuff, to be frank, that I mostly don’t know whether to eat or put in the bath. If I was the kind of person who climaxed at the thought of herbal tea, I would be in heaven right now – for herbal tea, sometimes put in a test-tube for extra swishitude, is the espresso martini of the self-care industry, a nice little bump. Putting a tea bag in a box and calling it a treat is also... cheap.

Still, I love unwrapping all these things that will make me feel happy and healed. Tissue-wrapped “hugs” in boxes. Or that’s the promise and there is something lovely about getting a parcel even if you have to wait in all day for it. But I am somewhat mystified by the contents of some of these boxes, essentially gift boxes of varying quality. Some are clearly not aimed at grouches like me, but would be nice for teenage girls. One Buddy Box has llama stickers, a make-yourself llama key ring (no it’s OK, thanks) a coffee scrub and a book called The French Art of Letting Go.

Another pretty Box of Calm contains instructions about how to “establish your own personal calming routine” and unscramble your anxieties, which inevitably involves a scented candle, a face mask and “We Are Tea Soothe Tummy Relief”. More bleedin’ tea in other words. A Refresh box had a notebook and pencil. Only, the pencil is a “Department Store for the mind”. It’s for me to write my truth in the notebook, where I must note my gratitude and goals. By the light of a Soy Hand Poured Moment Candle. Obviously.

There is nothing wrong with any of this, is there? A bath and a cup of tea? What used to be called pampering, the attempted recreation of a spa experience, is now a subscription service. One delivery consists of a picnic bag and some encouragement for me to go outside. Radical. Another contains food that will give me energy, including vegan mayonnaise and a Feisty Turmeric Guru teabag. How many annoying words can you wring out of one teabag, I wonder.

Clearly I have not learned to control my negative thoughts, which is advised in another book in another box: Believe in Yourself.

My favourite stuff turns out to be pointless and hippyish, a Healing box inside which are some socks, a pebble that says “one day at a time” and some gummy bears. I like it because it tells you to refill the box with things that are special to you. That’s cheerful and makes me think of the care packages I sent to one of my kids when she was living in southeast Asia: Heat magazine, cheese and eyeliner. Or the present of things to smile about that my youngest once made me, including hand-written messages such as: “None of your children are serial killers.”

A box of tiny treats is a wonderful thing to make for someone else. And yes, maybe even yourself. Self-soothing surely is essentially personal. Self-care, generically packaged like this, is just stuff. Lots of stuff. And actually invokes consumption, which is the opposite of the mindfulness twaddle that goes with all this candlelit soaking. Self-care in pretty boxes packaged up for women? What a lark. It was easier when everyone just gave us talc. No one had to pretend it was spiritual.