By Chhandasi Ganguly
In 1863, Aristide Boucicaut created the first modern department store, Le Bon March?. It was a veritable cathedral with stained glass balconies, dome ceilings, light and colour patterns playing across endless chambers of wonder. Meditating on the world Aristide Boucicaut created is the springboard for my argument that Western retail began as, and has developed throughout its long and rich history, into a religion.
I?m an aesthete, which is perhaps why I begin my meditation with a glance at the bricks and mortar of Boucicaut?s famed vision. However, think deeply on ritualised browsing, the power of touch, the presence of almost priestly narrators through the area, from shop assistants to the curatorial voice of the owner/manager, and you will begin to notice an interesting resonance. By transferring the sensory language of spirituality into a consumptive experience and playing artfully with vice, the department store knits together an experience that cleverly echoes and evolves responses tilled in Western religion.
Sacrificial consumption
Giving and giving up. Moments of guilt accompanied by pain and sacrifice. In Christianity, guilt and sin are assuaged by dedication, prayer and a relationship with a higher power. It is monetary too. The buying and selling of indulgences, by which it was believed that giving money to the church would reduce the time spent in purgatory,?drops itself neatly onto the collection plate. Other practices such as the “Novena,” a private or public devotion established within Catholicism, designed to obtain special graces, institutionalise this transactional culture.
These specific feelings are paralleled at the point of retail purchase. Underhill, perhaps one of the greatest commercial analysts of our time said ?The register is the least pleasing part of the store. Nobody is savouring the joy of possession at that moment. In fact, all that is experienced is loss.?So where does possession take place? Clearly, it?s an emotional and spiritual moment, not a technical one.? Guilt (in pleasure from purchase) and loss (the transaction of paying for goods) are assuaged by a spiritual moment, wherein the buyer takes possession of an object that then becomes publicly representative of specific values, beliefs and virtues. The idea that the object is value-laden passes an inherent comment on ethics, taste, orientations, and also the financial position of its owner, which is, in itself a modern virtue).
Conspicuous consumption as a primary measure of success is a shackle that continues to haunt contemporary cultural identities. The diversification of product offerings and the emergence of fast fashion retailers like H&M and Zara have tread some of the path in ameliorating restriction to accessibility. Still, the unique balance has become a mainstay of retail practice and is one of the most difficult ideas for contemporary retailers to orchestrate for their niche audiences.
Pilgrimage
Human movement, observation and interaction is ever important to both religion and retail. In regards to the latter, the physical journey is carefully manipulated to stimulate specific buying behaviours. Branded objects reference their neighbours; they all act together to articulate a schizophrenic, fractured, yet comprehensive insight into culture, imbuing the consumer with identity. Whatever its previous life has been, when an object enters a collection, it is born anew. Its rebirth is as a cultural object. By sharing in these stories, the retail environment is infused with the cultural identity that holds the potential of transference to its client. We understand the brand, even if it is challenging (requiring a certain leap of imagination or desire) because it is measured against the established yardsticks of reality. Likewise, the stories (or parables) that develop a flock?s understanding within Western religion, balance suspension of believing whilst ever referencing simple, common, identifiable realities.
Fashion retail as a public, connective process is a site of pilgrimage. Participation means becoming part of a bonded ?Group,”?despite never having met its other members. When we enter a space, we share a certain amount of knowledge and understanding about our environment with others. The idea that I dress solely for myself is illusory.
A new age Rubinstein
uWe express “Individuality,” only by referring in self-presentation to those groups and role models with which we identify (or reject), and by choosing among pre-existing styles (or rejecting them). The act of purchase takes with it a narrative, which is then reignited through conversations around purchased objects. Hence, there is an immediate sense of participation in a larger social milieu.
Introducing Helena Rubinstein, a cosmetic industry pioneer in the early-mid 1900s, whose retail space was described thus: ?Chirico?s white horses. Ladies sunning under artificial sun. Halicka panels in the health bar. Milk baths. Treatment rooms like dressing rooms. Miniature rooms in shadow boxes. Malvina Hoffman’s sculpted hands. Your own head looking well-coiffed. These are no surrealist babblings; they are the first, exciting impressions you receive in Helena Rubenstein’s new establishment?. Today, in our modern version of Rubenstein?s salon, Sephora, it is Ralph Lauren’s white horses, fluoro lipstick applied under fluorescent light. Digital panels declare contemporary gods in the Gaultier vestibule. There are milk cr?mes, exotic Arabicas and incarnate Orientalisms. Sample counters laid out like chocolate shop-boudoir hybrids. Your own reflection next to that of Mila Kunis – a future self, your better self. These are indeed the babblings of a contemporary consumer; they are the product of the continued, irresistible invasion of Sephora.
Worshipping online
Websites like Net-a-porter.com represent the full transition of the retail space into the intangible web environment. It becomes a highly responsive experience wherein our physiological online activities are both being heavily influenced and directed, but also dynamically influencing the platform. We enter a world wherein objects are documented, catalogued, displayed and archived. At the same time, we are encouraged to self-curate. Since we can no longer actively be seen in a physical space, we have ways of laying down digital crumbs. We observe and we are observed, facilitated by a single interface. The crumbs are all the tastier, positioned in the context of our other likes and dislikes to constitute a single social media footprint.
Each garment or accessory is photographed from several angles, and at times presented in a short video clip to demonstrate movement. Objects are sacralized with lighting, music and camera angles all strictly manipulated in order to build covetable, aspirational pieces. Garments are contextualized, but only to the extent that we may re-contextualize ourselves inside them. And yet, consumers cannot touch, nor smell the clothing, nor hear the rustle of fabric, which are sensory restrictions of the current online medium that heighten the distance between consumer and object.
Inevitable yet predetermined gratification
The immediate gratification that an in-store purchase will bring is also out of reach. At the same time, objects are desacralized. Elements may be viewed in extremely close detail and we are privy to specs such as fibre content, weave, price and colour range. We are also aware of the ease of vaulting the computer screen barrier with the simple click to purchase, to own what is inevitably a mass-produced item. Gratification is delayed, but it is very much attainable. Perhaps one of the most interesting developments within online retail is web-tracking technology. Growing more and more intuitive at an alarming rate, our browsing habits are captured and used to effectively deliver what our previous behaviours indicate we wish to see. Interestingly, both human and web manifestations will take the likes and interests of the responder into consideration, but will also work to their own specific agendas. In the retail space, they are ever shaped by the desire to prompt a purchase to and close the loop between the?object and private ownership.
Targeted auto-curating processes must be questioned if we are to avoid an excessively narrowed scope of understanding. If our online experiences are so precisely trained to our existing desires and interests, will it be difficult to venture beyond? Are we left with enough agency (or procrastination time) to ?Click through,? into new spheres of discovery? If the medium is the message, surely the lens is the loudspeaker, and we should remain conscious of not being drowned out by the vanguards of style, or perhaps versions of our past selves. Yet, if retail is the new (and timeless) religion, it is inevitable that we will continue to be controlled by vanguards pretending to agnostically cherry-pick our own value systems and authorities, but never straying too far from the cult that made the objects we require to build ourselves.
Featured Image Courtesy:?Photo via VisualHunt.com
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