Inspired by Paco Underhill, and with half an hour to spare, I stepped into the Atria Mall at Worli to do a little retail anthropology of my own.
I saw a few hundred families on their Sunday afternoon outing, I saw empty shops and a full food court, and then I saw the perfect off white linen jacket from Provogue.
I have been searching for an off-white linen jacket for months, I totally love the brand (more than half of my shirts are from Provogue), and, on any other day, I would have whipped out my wallet and paid the four and a half thousand bucks without even thinking about it.
However, even the most perfect linen jacket is so obviously not a necessity, especially when I already have half a dozen jackets I wear no more than ten times in a year.
So, I lingered on for half a minute and let my fingers roam over the soft textured fabric, then reined in my temptation, and walked out of the mall, thinking of the lime-green shoes from Judith Levine’s ‘Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping’ —