By XYZ
In 1863, Aristide Boucicaut created the first modern department store, Le Bon March?. It was a veritable cathedral ? stained glass balconies, dome ceilings, light and colour patterns playing across endless chambers of wonder. Meditating on the world he created is the springboard for the argument that Western retail began as, and has developed throughout its long and rich history, into a religion.
Being an aesthete, which is perhaps the reason for the 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 space (shop assistants and the curatorial voice of the owner/manager), and an interesting resonance will be observed.
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?s monetary as well.
The buying and selling of indulgences, whereby it was believed that giving money to the church would reduce the time spent in purgatory, drops itself neatly on to the collection plate. Other practices such as the novena (a private or public devotion established within Catholicism, designed to obtain special graces) institutionalise transactional culture.
These specific feelings are paralleled at the point of retail purchase. Underhill, one of the greatest commercial analysts 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 lost”.
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. The moment wherein the buyer takes possession of an object that then becomes publicly representative of specific values, beliefs and virtues. That the object is value-laden, makes an inherent comment on ethics, taste, orientations, and also the financial position of its owner. This 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) has moved towards ameliorating restriction to accessibility. However, the unique balance has become a mainstay of retail practice. It has also become one of the most difficult ideas for contemporary retailers to orchestrate for their niche audiences.
Pilgrimage
Human movement, observation and interaction is important to both religion and retail. With regard 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 the 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 a cultural object. By sharing these stories, the retail environment is infused with the cultural identity. Hence, holding the potential of transference to its client. Likewise, the stories (or parables) that develop a flock?s understanding of Western religion, balance suspension of believing whilst ever referencing simple, common, identifiable realities.
Fashion retail as a connective process is a site of pilgrimage. Participation means becoming part of a bonded ?group?, despite never having met its other members. When one enters a space, a certain amount of knowledge and understanding about our environment with others is shared. The idea that one dresses solely for oneself is illusory. “Individuality” is expressed only with reference to the self-presentation to those groups and role models with which one identifies (or reject), and by choosing among pre-existing styles (or rejecting them). The act of purchasing takes with it a narrative, which is then reignited through conversations around purchased objects. So, there is an immediate sense of participation in a larger social milieu.
Helena Rubinstein: The modern version
Introducing Helena Rubinstein (cosmetic industry pioneer, early-mid 1900s), whose retail space was described thus: “Chirico?s white horses. Ladies sunning under the 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 one receives 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. One’s own reflection next to that of Mila Kunis – a future self, a better self. These are indeed the babblings of a contemporary consumer; they are the product of the continued, irresistible invasion of Sephora.
Worshipping online shopping
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. Our physiological online activities are both being heavily influenced/directed, but also dynamically influencing the platform. This is a world wherein objects are documented, catalogued, displayed and archived. At the same time, one is encouraged to self-curate. Because a person can no longer actively be seen in a physical space, as there are ways of laying down digital crumbs. The crumbs are 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. They are also, presented in a short video clip to demonstrate movement. Objects are sacralized: lighting, music and camera angles are all strictly manipulated in order to build covetable, aspirational pieces. Garments are contextualized, but only to the extent that one may re-contextualize ourselves. However, consumers cannot touch, nor smell the clothing, nor hear the rustle of fabric ? sensory restrictions of the current online medium, that heighten the distance between consumer and object.
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 one is privy to specs such as fibre content, weave, price, colour range, etc. Every individual is 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.
The thrill of web-tracking
Perhaps one of the most interesting developments in online retail is web-tracking technology. Growing more and more intuitive at an alarming rate, our browsing habits are captured and are used to effectively deliver what our previous behaviours indicate what is wished to be seen. 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 shaped by the desire to prompt a purchase. It also seeks to close the loop between the object and private ownership.
Targeted auto-curating processes must be questioned. Especially, if one is 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? Is anyone 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 every shopper 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 one 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 one is required to do, to build by oneself.
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