During the 1970s and ’80s, the sophisticated shopping experience was not branded in efficiency or self-denial or schemes devised in investment banks. Dean & DeLuca was itself a work of art. This was also true of Barneys, another institution born of the ethos that shopping was an act of self-actualization. Now both institutions find themselves in financial free-fall. — The New York Times
Ginia Bellafante of The New York Times pens a sombre remembrance for the gold old days of shopping, when "demand was not so obviously engineered," and purchasing life's necessities constituted a social act.
The missive is inspired by the recent financial collapse of high-end grocer Dean & DeLuca and the fashion brand Barneys, two design-forward, trail-blazing New York City institutions that have fallen pray to contemporary economic pressures. The changing nature of shopping and the effects of those shifts on so-called "shopping architecture" are a significant and important element of contemporary life.
Bellafante laments, for example, "Despite these abiding economic truths, it is also true that the city that produced a retail culture focused on discovery and experimentation has become a place with Amazon boxes on the stoop of every brownstone," adding, "We have allowed our habits to become so effectively manipulated toward convenience that is hard to imagine appreciating idiosyncrasy if it returned."
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