When I came back to reality, I found myself staring at the Dries Van Noten quilted coat on the third floor in Nordstrom. I felt embarrassed immediately because I realized I’m in a public space, not at home where I can stare at a single item for a long time to appreciate it, to measure its value, to fantasize about what I will look like if wearing it. There was actually no one, no shop assistant, no customer, but I can still feel the shame.
There are always a lot of terms including the word “shame” related to women, despite the well-known “slut-shame”, what I can feel on an everyday basis, is this “shopaholic shame”.
1
Sometimes, I will think, do people need to cover their anxiety with some other behaviors when they are shopping, just like I do? When I hop in a store, circumstances will happen like, I fell in love with a piece at the first sight, but I would pace from the first hanger to the last, avoiding myself thinking in front of that particular piece for a long time but end up not buying it. “You don’t need to buy every piece you tried” my mom used to tell me. When I was a coy and timid girl in high school, I would sulk a little if I try something I like but ending up not buying it because I felt guilty about the time and effort the shop assistant devoted and the issues I had for not buying them, maybe my figure and my face, maybe my financial situation. It also has something to do with my background, for I grow up in a culture that no one wants to cause other people trouble. This anxiety and negative feeling are gradually cured when I learned more about consumerism and service.
Opening Ceremony is my favorite place in SOHO but also my fig leaf, The characteristic that makes a buyer shop or curated shop better than boutiques to some extent is, people will know you have good taste when they see the letters on your shopping bag, but they will never know very clear about what exactly is your taste, this rule also applies to its price. When the Opening ceremony announced its retail location closed on January 14th, 2020, I realized I need to find a new place to continue my fantasy-fulfilling shopping pattern.
I don’t want shopping, I want the possibilities that shopping can bring
2
There are many shopping websites, when department stores with more than 100 years of history like Nordstrom, Bloomingdales, Bergdorf Goodman, and Saks Fifth Avenue try to build their e-commerce platforms, they are unquestionably trustworthy for the customers, but in order not to be overwhelmed by the countless products, I would rather go to retailers who started themselves as an online shopping platform, like Farfetch, NET-A-PORTER, and Ssense, mainly because of their interface design.
It’s easy to be overwhelmed when you shop online, because of the number at the top showing how many products they have, it also becomes the reason why a lot of people leave before browsing anything.
Things online look fancier, but you can not touch it, you can not feel it. In this case, how to present an item became especially important for platforms while choosing their schemes. I will say presenting only the picture without model try-on can be the best and the worst idea depends on customers. The models’ try-on create an illusionary impression that makes you wonder how good you look when you wear it, as long as the look has the right stylist and model to complete it. The lookbook of each piece differs Ssense from other online shopping platforms. they choose supermodels, whose look and height are unapproachable for ordinary people, and their models don’t have any facial expression, which adds a clean Scandinavian vibe to the whole look. Websites like Shopbop, they prefer average models with a cute smile, give you this delusion that everything they present is so approachable, you can as good as her if not consider your fat and height. SSENSE's interface is also spotless, it is the minimalist of shopping websites. The characteristic also is shown when they curate their brands, I will have this blind self-confidence when I tell people my favorite shopping website is Ssense to show I have something more to do just than just shopping.
3
In China, we have this old saying “eat, drink, man, woman” to show two of the most important parts to compose our daily desire, appetite, and libido. But consumerism adds something else to the formula. We want to consume, our desire for goods is just as abundant as libido or even more than that. Being frank about what you want is always better than someone else find it through the traces you left on the internet and put the jigsaw together to figure out the whole picture. In this case, comparing to sex, which needs consent; and eating: we all know body shame is an obsolete product, but still we prefer those who look healthy and fit, fulfilling the material desire is the easiest one if you have the money. But people naturally have shame for their desires, they feel even more embarrassed when their desires can not be fulfilled, which is one of the reasons when it comes to luxury goods, more people especially Gen-Z choose to shop online. Customer discrimination is hidden under the decent uniforms and perfect smiles which are apparently under training.
Should shopping be private for people? More and more rich people have personal shoppers. when you check out, the shop assistant will usually cover your merchandise with rice papers. shopping can both a public behavior and somewhat personal, people use it to showcase what they are able to do, but at the same time, they want to hide what they buy. For Gen-Z like me, (I’m actually a millennial, for I born in 1996), luxury shopping is better to make it private, because of my age, my financial status, which is fully dependant on my parents and we just want to the whole process quick and dirty, for we are familiar with the internet all our lives.
Usually, the first and most common luxury piece for people my age in China is a Louis Vuitton Neverfull tote bag, my case is a little different but not that special is a Burberry green tartan scarf, which I bought it online. And that’s the beginning of everything.
I’m always a fashion enthusiast who watch campaigns even when I brush my teeth, as more and more brands I knew, I begin to fall for those I thought to be special to show my characteristic. Does it mean I’m not mature enough because I still need clothes to show who I am? When clothes show who I am, it can also hide my identity, and that’s why we love unisex and uniform-like clothes to neutralize the feminine touch of our styles. I still remember when I first discovered Ssense, actually, I was aiming at an opening ceremony baby tee, but the moment I began to value it, is when I typed “Tricot Commes Des garçon” and found Ssense is the North American shopping website that has the most styles of this brand. Even I have to admit, their filter sucks, you cannot choose a color in the filter, but they have wonderful keyword searching just when I type “Mint” in the search bar, everything mint appeared. They figure out this way to make every name of products so detailed to make sure customers get what they want through the search bar. This naming strategy makes websites with huge filter categories seem redundant.
4
The coronavirus pandemic provided me with chances because of the crazy discounts, I can still recall myself witnessing graphics in my wishlist turning grey and even disappear. It was summer, during early July, some of the seasonal keywords include patchwork, floral, sandals, etc. I carefully browsed them, evaluate them, then put them in the wishlists until the d-day I finally made up my mind to check out.
There were more than 100 products on the list, but I only checked out two. One of the most important reasons can be vintage gradually growing on me after I came to NYC. The other reason will be, as long as you consider any of those pieces as daily wear, not a lot of fancy stuff can be long-lasting especially when you do not settle down and need to move frequently.
One of the typical day in my quarantine lives is, I watched the whole Marie Kondo show on Netflix and tied up my bedroom and wardrobe for nearly five hours. Most Chinese youngster of my age read or at the least know the book Danshari, which is about cutting off useless asset that takes over our minds, Danshari is a Japanese version philosophy about minimalism. See how twisted I am for I’m suffering and enjoying between consumerism and minimalism.
Luxury and merchandise have been simplified as status symbols by people who believe the goods they show off can represent themselves. When I begin to accumulate them, one of the most frequent questions will be “Am I rich or Am I poor?” Fortunately, people invented the concept of poverty in a philosophical sense, which is when your desire exceeds what you can earn, you are poor to some extent. In this case, whether I’m poor or not is totally subjective.
5
When Kenichi Ohmae published his book “Low desire society”, I believed some people including me were frustrated by the fact that there will be a day when we intrinsically don’t want that much stuff, seemingly positive but also means we have less aspiration for the future and more anxiety for those uncertainties, may be caused by the depression or other negative consequences of capitalism. but most of the behaviors, including shopping, are merely pathways. when shopping brings me joy and financial burdens, so do other behaviors. If life is about finding a balance in everything, it won’t be very hard to choose the product that can make my heart pound and keep pounding.