Polly Vernon has her say
WHEN I WAS two, my parents rudely uprooted me from the town of my birth – Brighton – and transplanted me to a small fishing village in Devon. Young me was not impressed. Allegedly, the first thing I said on beholding my new circumstances – that dreamy, sleepy place with its higgledypiggledy riverside houses painted every shade of fading quaint – was: ‘Where are all the shops and people?’
I say ‘allegedly’ because, obviously, I can’t remember. This is how my mother used to tell it. She was never one to let the truth get in the way of a good story, my mum. It might not have happened at all.
And yet… it does sound like me.
For as long as I can remember, shops – clothes shops – and people have been my idea of a good time. Why? Because they are opportunity! Stimulation. Ideas and possibilities. The potential for change. They offer distraction. Drama. Disappointment one day, boundless joy the next. A mechanism for losing yourself, reimagining yourself, rebuilding yourself from the ground up.
Pursuing them both has served me well. Got me to London. Given me stuff to write about. Got me through dark days, dreary episodes. If I feel low on ideas or mood, I’ll try one – then the other. I’ll have a coffee with a mate; or I’ll dally for blissful, solitary hours in some department store, testing make-up, trying on jeans. I’ll get daytime drunk with some other mate; or I’ll get off my face on fashion in the changing room of this pop-up I just found.
It is, therefore, with some concern that I witness the beginning of the end of physical shopping. (Unless: might we even be at the middle of the end of it?) Opening Ceremony, the New York-based fashion emporium I’ve always revered as one of the few joints left that’s a bit too cool even for me, last month announced it was closing all real-life stores, focusing its efforts online. The demise of the British high street, meanwhile, is the bad business story that won’t go away: all those jobs lost, all those buildings boarded up. It’s the internet, innit? Making buying things so dashed convenient, we never have to leave our own home.
Now: I am not so purist as to never shop online. It’s so easy, but also: not without its own distinct buzz. But online should supplement, not replace, physical shopping! Physical shopping is an artform and it is a ritual. It is windows, and shopfloor layout and clever styling on the mannequins; it’s time spent, floors walked, assistants charmed, tunes heard for the first time on PAS… It is a three-dimensional, wholly immersive, truly transformative experience and, without it? I’d only have people! And good though you are… you are not shops.