The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption

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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’ —

The young women around me are giggling and cooing, complimenting each other and admiring their own slim ankles. One of them is dancing across the floor in a pair of green spike heels so high that they almost pitch her forward, into an imaginary partner’s arms.

These shoes conjure dreams of dancing and kissing, of hobbling over the curbstones as the dawn comes up.

I find myself debating internally. (They may be flimsy, even crippling, but)… fashion is about flirtation, not marriage. A pair of lime-green stiletto heels is never meant to be more than a one night stand.

I could eat these lime-green shoes. Not for nothing do the French call window shopping la leche-vitrine — licking shop windows.

As I leave the store, I look back through the window. Piles of boxes surround the shoppers. Discards are tossed aside, tangled in their tissue sheets. It’s a scene of debauchery. I feel envious… What I long for is the cheap thrill of the ephemeral, the instantly consumed and discarded mini relationship with person or thing, the “quickie” than is urban commerce.

I walk home along Smith Street, pockets empty, licking the shop windows with my eyes.

As I type this, I’m licking shop windows in my mind.

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