028: Retail Therapy

Notes on a novel thing called Shopping in Person

From a very young age, I had loathed the act of shopping. Some of my earliest memories of soul crushing are of weekends being dragged through the Ikea in Purley Way, not far at all from our home in the London suburb of Croydon, but the drive there felt like being marched to the gallows. Even now, if I must go to Ikea, no matter how many confusing and winding paths they concoct, I will be out of there in record time. Shopping and I have been like oil and water.

If it wasn't Ikea crushing my soul on the weekends, then it was Allders, Debenhams, Marks & Spencer and the whole odious lot at the Whitgift Centre. My cousin and I joke about how our mothers traumatized us every weekend (though this is a deliberate exaggeration because there are photos and videos confirming that on many a weekend we took family road trips to Scotland, Portsmouth, Kew Gardens, etc. etc.), pushing us up the bus headed to East Croydon for a miserable day of shopping. The only thing we had to look forward to, other than climbing up and down the stacks of carpets at Allders in the Home section, truly the worst section in our opinion, was being treated to slice of piping hot and laden with cheese pizza from the Pizza Hut window; to go into the actual location would shatter any illusion we'd conjured of the strangeness and greatness of being handed pizza from a person behind a window.

Andrew Scott, Claire Foy, and Jamie Bell about to ascend the escalators of my childhood doom at the Whitgift Centre in All of Us Strangers.

For the first few years that I'd spent living in America, it felt that all I ever did was inhale the stale pretzel and orange and brown food court-glob air of malls. Any of the rather sad and lonely hours not spent at my community college were spent working at the mall, and if I hadn't been summoned to work on the weekend, I would return to the scene of the crime with my parents, the three of us a bit at a loss with what else to do with our free time in America. Shopping, for the most part, was something that had often elicited negative connotations in my mind, from loneliness and ill-treatment by ugly customers, to feeling as though I had no right to be there. 

But there were pockets of joy too, even if I had to be badgered into participating. Window pizza and carpet towers. Playing dress-up with my mother in the fitting room of a sprawling Lord & Taylor for her first job interview in over ten years, even when we had the means to maybe purchase just one piece, any lacking never getting in the way of imagination. A pair of Steve Madden black patent loafers for $10 at Ross, and feeling as though I had struck gold. Several years ago, I'd gone on a trip to London after a long stretch of having not been, and while walking past what used to be the Allders flagship, there since 1862 and by then fallen to administration, I felt an unexpected ache. Inside the Whitgift Centre remained the battered last few soldiers of a war lost, this place where parents who were trying to do their best brought their children who made the most of it.

Dries Van Noten in Paris; Marni in Milan

Last fall, while on a trip to Barcelona with my husband and parents, we passed a shop selling undergarments, the kind I would have wistfully looked at but not step foot in if I were on my own, the kind of shop I'm talking about when I habitually yell at my husband, "I JUST WANT TO WALK INTO A SHOP AND BUY A PAIR OF GOOD QUALITY SOCKS AND PAJAMAS AND IT'S NO BIG DEAL AND DOESN'T SMELL OF CHEAP PERFUME AND WALK OUT WHY IS THAT SO HARD?" But we were with my mother, the woman who taught me the importance of feeling fabrics and reading material composition labels, and who needed to replace a wool and silk camisole she'd bought in the nineties and had loyally worn through many winters, now falling to pieces after finding nothing like it in America. And of course, Gèneres de punt La Torre, which has been around since 1900, had it. It felt novel to be in a shop with a wide range of slips and undershirts, socks and underthings that didn't look flammable, to look at and to learn. To appreciate the quality of things. 

In the spring of last year, I spent a week in Milan. Aside from eating a lot, our agenda was loose and my husband and I spent most of the trip walking around and – rather unlike us – popping in and out of shops. The spectacle of Rinascente, a quiet little jewelry shop in Brera, stepping through a portal at Sunnei, the electric blue floors and sunshine clothing displays at Marni. We didn't emerge from each shop armed with shopping bags like an aughties montage of Americans in Europe, but what a wonderful sensation to be able to touch the rubberized Sunnei earrings I had longed for months or try on a pair of Marni Fussbett sandals I had wanted for years. Being able to feel it out and put it on, getting up close and personal with objects I was contemplating spending hard-earned money on is difficult to achieve when looking at it flat on a screen. My desire matched my expectations and I left with the earrings and sandals.

View of the ground floor of the Issey Miyake store in Milan; Sunnei portal

This past weekend, I suggested to my ever-patient husband, let's go shopping in real life. We headed up to Nordstrom, first to the men's shop and then over to the main location. It was a respite for my worn-out wrists accustomed to endlessly scrolling for even a simple sweater and for my eyes that dry out from staring at my phone, all to open too many tabs I would inevitably lose track of. Though I left with nothing at the time and treated the senses instead, a terrible habit of mine, I tried on beautiful jackets by Sacai, Dries Van Noten, Saks Potts, and Jacquemus, surprised by the things that did and didn't work. Cuts I hadn't even entertained, convinced they wouldn't suit me, looked quite shockingly great, something I wouldn't have known if I hadn't felt it on and around me. An intimidatingly cool JW Anderson leather jacket beckoned me from its quiet corner, and what the hell I thought, let me try it on. I'm embarrassed to say I may have checked myself out in the mirror. 

Afterwards, we made our way to Dover Street Market, just around the corner from Curry in a Hurry, intriguingly and yet fittingly located in Kips Bay. The neighborhood is a far cry from Soho and Williamsburg, devout in its refusal to entirely erase its history. A visit to DSM is an exercise in commitment to fashion and an insistence on gleaning something, a feeling, inspiration, from the retail experience. After devouring the last pizza bianca of the day and knocking back an untimely espresso at Rose Bakery, located inside the store, we made our way up and down stairs and elevators and a Flinstone's-esque tunnel like we were in Alice's Fashion Wonderland. 

Shop the Story; JW Anderson in London

I am entirely unashamed to say that I lost my cool before the Undercover display, squealed at the Comme de Garçons Girl checkered selection, said hello to my JW Anderson leather jacket again, caressed a pair of faux-teddy lined Kiko Kostadinov burgundy flats, and bounced a Melitta Baumeister dress. Many of these brands are difficult to locate in New York, particularly after the decline of concept stores, and department stores are less willing to take a chance on more radical designers. Lately I'd been feeling that avenues for exploration and discovery have been drying up, and the tactility alone of going to a shop was reinvigorating. As I descended the steps and passed Kalyustan's, my mind was buzzing with ideas of all the new possibilities of dressing and thinking of how the intimacy of such a moment, being able to interact with a garment or shoe or bag in real time in real life, enhanced its value for me.

When I first moved to New York over ten years ago, in my spare time I would take the train near my Bed-Stuy apartment, change at Broadway Junction and then walk from the station to L-Train Vintage and Urban Jungle. I would take time to wander around the store before diving into the racks, feeling for textures and interiors, learning about the construction of a coat or the value of the purity of the fabrics. From there I bought my first fur coat, which bore a rust satin lining and a decorated gold button. Online shopping is an unstoppable force, that I know. Often it's easier, sometimes there simply aren't other options. But the tangibility of shopping in person, even if it is just to look, not only offers a deeper appreciation of a garment, but also extends a more enriching experience in the cultivation of personal style, something that a flat image alone, at least for me, just cannot muster.

Until next time!