Womenswear Articles       4/18/2002

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AllWomenMenHome  Eco-fashion Print This Page “Shopping has always been a form of therapy. Women get an enormous amount of pleasure from the act of looking, and it’s an escape.” - Paco Underhill, Envirosell DO YOU GET MORE PLEASURE FROM WEARING SOMETHING YOU’VE HAD FOR A LONG TIME, OR SOMETHING YOU’VE JUST BOUGHT? (WOMEN 16-70) Had for a long time 32% Just bought 65%

RETAIL THERAPY

When 36-year-old Meryl has a less than stellar day, she sometimes does what she considers the ultimate pick-me-up: she goes shopping.

“If you’re having a really bad day, going out and treating yourself makes you feel like you’re righting a wrong in some way,” says the pharmaceutical executive who lives in Tarrytown, N.Y.

While some of Meryl’s “therapeutic” apparel purchases are impulse buys, they’re usually items that she’s had her eye on for a while. “It’s not that I set out to buy a blouse, it’s more that I saw this great jacket, it’s a little more expensive, and now I’m buying it because I feel I deserve it,” she explains.

That perspective doesn’t surprise Carrie Richardson, owner of Celeste Turner, an upscale boutique on Chicago’s Armitage Avenue. “It’s part of our nature that, as women, we feel good when we buy something,” affirms Richardson.

“Men like bigger toys,” she adds. “For women, it doesn’t take a car—it can be a sexy shirt, a necklace, or a great handbag. If you’re not feeling your best, or having an ‘ugly’ day, a new pair of pants can be a great lift.”

As Cotton Incorporated’s Lifestyle MonitorTM found, women are actually happier when they’re wearing something brand new. When surveyed, 65% of women said they receive more pleasure from wearing something they’ve just bought, rather than an item they’ve had for a long time.

With that in mind, Richardson makes sure that any customer in her shop can treat herself to a little on-the-spot luxury. “We understand the mentality of women,” she relates. “On a Saturday I’ll get a group of three or four girls in here, they’ve just had breakfast out somewhere, they’ve rehashed what happened the night before, and now they want something new for tonight—maybe a $30 T-shirt.”

This is all familiar territory to Paco Underhill, a retail consultant with Manhattan-based Envirosell and author of the book, Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping. “Shopping has always been a form of therapy, and I think this has both positive and negative implications,” he says. “Women get an enormous amount of pleasure from the act of looking, and it’s an escape.”

But Underhill says it’s also more complicated – that our urge to shop is inexorably tied to our desire to connect with others. “The reason why we shop stems from a basic social need; part of the process is not just acquiring goods,” he relates. “People are social, and they need to be around other people. Going to the marketplace has been a drive since we were hunters and gatherers.”

One shop that takes the social component seriously is The Studio, a Brookline, Mass.-based boutique owned by Sandy Gradman, her twin sister, Ilene Epstein, and their best friend, Marcie Brawer. These women see their mission as more than just selling clothes—it’s creating community.

What started out 23 years ago as a 225-square-foot space in Marcie’s home is now a 3,700-square-foot shop on the second floor of an office building. Another Studio opened last year in Peterborough, N.H. The store has 10,000 customers on its mailing list, and the Harvard Business School plans to use the company as a case study for its MBA classes.

Much of their success can be attributed to the importance of creating a welcoming gathering place that is equal parts social outing and style celebration—individual style, that is. “There’s an exciting feeling here; there’s always a lot of fuss and activity,” relates Gradman. “People come here, and they meet other people who shop here, and before you know it everyone’s trying on things and helping each other out. It’s an incredible dynamic, and it’s a phenomenon that’s really all about women.

“People really respond to that personalized atmosphere,” she adds. “Everyone’s so time-deprived and stressed out, they want a place where they can go where they know they’ll find wonderful items, and also have a great time.”

So strong is the connection among Studio customers that, immediately after September 11, women came here to talk and make sense of it all. “Clothing was certainly not on the top of everyone’s list, but people still came here just to chat,” relates Gradman. “And if they saw something, it was a pick-me-up, a way to get back to the real world.”

On the opposite end of the social spectrum, of course, is online shopping, a purely solitary experience. But what Web shopping lacks in social bonding, it makes up for in its immediacy: the ability to provide true instant gratification, at any time of day or night.

“When you physically go shopping in a store, it can almost be like a girls’ day out—it’s a social thing. But shopping online is down and dirty shopping— it’s pure,” says Laura Eisman, CEO and creative director of Girlshop.com, which specializes in super trendy and up-and-coming designers. “With online shopping, you’re able to get this ‘therapy’ at the click of a button, without even leaving your home. If it’s a rainy day and you don’t feel like going outside, you can just go online and satisfy those cravings. It’s an instant fix.”

The bottom line? Shopping, for women, is ultimately a feel-good thing. “On the floor above us in our building is a group of women therapists, and they come down and shop here,” says Gradman of The Studio. “We always joke with them about which form of ‘therapy’ is more effective, theirs or ours. It might be more expensive here, you might walk out spending a few hundred dollars, but you’ll probably feel much better.”

This story is one in a series of articles based on findings from Cotton Incorporated’s Lifestyle Monitor™ tracking research. Each story will focus on a specific topic as it relates to the American women’s wear consumer and her attitudes and behavior regarding clothing, appearance, fashion, fiber selection and many other timely, relevant subjects.