Adam Gopnik has a fantastic piece in The New Yorker right now about the slow death of New York's department stores, and department stores in general.
Let me try to pull out some of the quotes I loved. But take the time to read the whole thing. Good stuff. So well-written.
Here's the opening paragraph:
TThe great department stores of New York lie on the avenues now like luxury liners becalmed in a lagoon, big ships in shallow water. All around them, the dhows and junks and speedboats of the new national retailing, Staples and Victoria’s Secret and Banana Republic and the Gap, honk at them and insult their sisters and get in their way. (And the newcomers hunt in pairs, so that no Duane Reade appears without a Starbucks nearby, no Staples without a Victoria’s Secret minding its rear, as though the urge to tickle your husband and the urge to buy discounted stationery goods, the urge to caffeine and the urge to Coricidin were twinned deep in the desire system of the brain.) Saks and Bergdorf and Bloomingdale’s, immense and slow, look down at them and try to continue on a stately course, but the water is ebbing from around their keels.
Another one: Gopnik here takes a stroll through Lord & Taylor, and describes what he sees.
The store plays the national anthem at ten o’clock every morning. On the sixth floor, the restaurateur Larry Forgione has opened a new café, complete with wine by the glass and a sweeping panoramic view of sturdy ladies’ coats. The chowder is tasty, the wine decent. But there is something about Forgione himself—someone who has become a brand without ever quite having been a name—that extends the sense of a time warp, another era of hope.
Now that is good writing there! I particularly enjoyed this part:
The brand names are Jack Victor and Grant Thomas, name brands that are neither really names nor really brands, and seem to set off the commercial logic of brand-naming in a twilight zone of pure performance: no one wants to wear Jack Victor slacks, but there they are, hanging in poignant rows, their creases abjectly offered. It is a kind of installation piece: the department store as an abstract exercise in naming and branding and display, without commercial urgency and, mostly, without customers.
It's an extensive piece, dealing with the history of retailing, what department stores MEANT, and what was the beginning of the end. A great piece of writing.
(via Dad, who pointed it out to me on Arts & Letters Daily)
September 19, 2003
Dirge for Department Stores
Adam Gopnik has a fantastic piece in The New Yorker right now about the slow death of New York's department stores, and department stores in general.
Let me try to pull out some of the quotes I loved. But take the time to read the whole thing. Good stuff. So well-written.
Here's the opening paragraph:
Whoa! People! I'm like, so sad! Department stores used to be like, So Cool, but now they're all lame and like major geezers and smell all, like old, and I'm like, YUK!
Continue reading "Dirge for Department Stores"
Posted by Sheila O'Malley at 02:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted by: count busy at September 19, 2003 08:30 PMIt is awfully well-written, as almost everything in The New Yorker is.
Yet I can't find it in me to express much grief over the slow decline of the department store, nor can I relate to the final line describing them as a "place to hope in."
I like to go to shopping malls. I almost never go into department stores. Frankly, going to the mall, wandering from store to store, stopping for a bite to eat, is more satisfying to me than wandering around a big mammoth department store. Especially when there's very little difference between the two experiences, except the mall has more variety and often better prices, and more places to sit and chat, than the big giant store.
Maybe I'm too much a believer in free markets. I sit there and think, "If the department stores wanted my business, they'd find ways to make me want to go there. Because right now, I rarely want to go there."
I'm a heartless bastard. But you knew that.
Posted by: Dean Esmay at September 20, 2003 04:21 AMwell, I have no feeling about the demise of department stores since i hate shopping in general and avoid crowds like the plague (which is why, I am sure, I have moved to the Manhattan area. ??)
I just like Gopnik's writing. That's why I posted it.
Posted by: red at September 20, 2003 10:49 AMAnd what I DO like in department stores is exactly what Gopnik describes: a nostalgia for a way of life that is passing or has passed.
I also LOVE the rickety wooden escalators at Macy's. So cool.
Posted by: red at September 20, 2003 11:10 AMHey Red, I had a great comment all typed and ready to send, but my finger slipped and I lost it somehow. I promise, it was an AWESOME comment. You'll have to trust me. !@#$%&*
Posted by: Patrick at September 21, 2003 01:21 AMDept. stores are overrated. Just let them go... peacefully.
Posted by: jen at September 23, 2003 03:13 PMThe department stores have been with us over 150 years, and their time is drawing near. A few years ago the national chain EATON'S closed in Canada, or was bought out and resurfaced as slightly snazzier SEARS outlets. The venerable Hudson's Bay Company still has the Bay dept stores dotted across the country, and there are the other, smaller Sears, etc. I used to like them. I used to like the animated Christmas displays, now a thing of the past, at least on the west coast. And the service has gone downhill, you have to practically knock over something to find a sales "associate". Still, I have set my first novel in the Bay department store, and if anyone reading this has an interesting, amusing or horrific anecdote about shopping or working in a department store, and wouldn't mind sharing it with me, send it to me.
Posted by: Fingers McGinty at August 13, 2004 06:16 PM