okay so the skinny jeans didn't work out for me so well …

Much has been made of the dearth of low prices on what was an honorable tradition. But too much of the focus has been on stores like WalMart. Much like other forces which have undergone significant changes due to the influence of other values that run counter-cultural to their core value the rage against WalMart simply hides a deeper, darker truth. That is the same in which it has always been if you look at the death of anything from hip-hop to Hollywood and that is in the fact that death had come along years, even decades prior, often when you felt as though said past time was very much alive.

Before WalMart there were other discounters of course yet prices were not really that much cheaper than that of the next guy. Perhaps 5 to 10 percent cheaper at best. This article is not so much about stores like WalMart that promise everything to anyone looking for a deal, but specifically with outlets selling stuff that people do not necessarily need like clothing and upscale goods and in particular where the cultural shifts have occurred. In seeing how shopping centers in America’s downtown has changed over the decades we can begin to understand some of the angst behind stores like WalMart. It is interesting to note that in spite of those changes in the seventies and eighties, the change that was coming in that part of retail was nowhere near as profound with grocers, and much of the culture was still in tact. WalMart’s taking over was perhaps a subtle confirmation that retail would never be the same again, and that nothing about retail would ever be “sacred” again.

Most of you remember those old department stores that existed downtown, in any town throughout America. In fact department stores were so popular at one time that even smaller towns of population less than 100,000 had them. JCPenny’s and Sears popped up virtually wherever possible, whereas smaller regional stores may or may not exist. Macy’s was primarily known for having a store in New York City, what ended up becoming Federated Stores years later were various department stores in the Midwest.

Years before Federated took over Macy’s and renamed hundreds of department stores to Macy’s around the nation department stores reflected the cultural tastes of those in the regions they served. When I was growing up in Akron Ohio we had two department stores downtown, Polsky’s and O’ Neils. Both department stores essentially sold the same thing, and today both stores have disappeared though the buildings that housed those stores have been taken over by the University of Akron and the City of Akron. If you are old enough to remember, you can probably see store displays when you are downtown in the former O’ Neils building getting your driver’s license renewed.

I was too young to remember Polsky’s but I do remember O’ Neils. Polsky’s had closed in 1978 but O’ Neils stayed around a bit longer into the 80s. They had the most magnificent store displays, particularly during Christmas and you had to walk up long sets of stairs until the store on red carpet. They had everything, a bakery, all of the usual guilty pleasures and distractions that go along with shopping in a department store. As a kid just walking up the stairs and seeing the store come closer to me was a big part of the excitement, as were the escalators and walking through the parking garage. There was something magical about the experience, and the fact of the clothing in the store, though exquisite to be sure, paled in comparison to the store itself.

When we stores downtown closed and we were forced to go to the department stores in the suburbs the experience was not quite the same. Those stores tried to bring some of that magic to suburbia but failed miserably. It is very odd, because much of what those stores downtown had was there, but it just didn’t feel right. The blandness of shopping malls had something to do with it. A shopping mall that is freestanding out in suburbia rarely compares to one that is built into downtown. The clothes seem flat and artificial, the displays seem to be compromised, the excitement lost.

One thing I do miss about being in Akron is that down here the department stores are always associated with a shopping mall. There are no freestanding department stores of the caliber of Macy’s that anchor strip malls. Instead those strip malls are always anchored by a WalMart, Target or Khols. What is sad is that Khols tries desperately to bring some of the glamour back to the department store. Yet the fact that they are always on a single level and do not sell anything even remotely close to being as expensive as it should be in a department store is sad.

There is also something to be said about the way in which clothing has been cheapened, forcing us to buy from top designers to get the same type of quality from labels that were considered to be rather pedestrian when all of this madness started. For example Bugle Boy used to have some real quality behind it in the late 80s, but now sells for a fraction of the price in Family Dollar. I used to pay over $40 for a pair of pants back then. People actually respected Levi’s back then as well, though I always felt that during the nineties the company had entirely too much inventory and never could find a way to sell all of it.

But in all truth Levi’s was all you really expected to buy, in fact if you could get a pair of Calvin Klein or Guess it was a really big deal and somewhat of an accomplishment. Sure the quality sucked in comparison to what we have today that was some really, really, heavy denim. But it actually meant something now when Tommy Hilfiger came in to play the discounters had come into their own and you were a fool to purchase it from the department store. Getting something for 25% off was laughable because the discounters already had it for half off before they ever began to think about marking it down.

Yet I still shopped in the department stores because the displays were better well rather, there actually were displays, and it had some type of a look and feel to it. It just felt as though it was actually worth something when I bought it from there, and I tended to hold onto that stuff forever. Buying Polo from TJMaxx just didn’t mean anything as opposed to buying it at Kauffman’s, even at the same price. Plus there was something regal about the Polo that Kauffman’s sold, as opposed to buying it from TJMaxx for some odd reason.

These days if you’re really stressed out about getting a particular designer you make a road trip to the factory outlet store or you buy it online. You don’t make any trips to the department stores, and that’s sort of sad. Because it doesn’t really mean anything at the factory outlet store or online, and that’s a big part of the reason that designers have been careful with what they put online. I could be wrong, but it almost feels as though pedestrian items which do not have that much worth anyway, or stuff that doesn’t sell well in the stores, is what is being offered online. With the factory outlet store at least you knew it was because of manufacturing defects, or the fact that too much of it was made for sale.

Looking back on it we were never really meant to wear Polo Ralph Lauren to begin with; we didn’t have enough money coming in and we often had to go out of way to get it, meaning dealing with snotty sales staff who didn’t understand why we were buying it at the beginning of the trends or not really wanting to sell it to us. Being followed around the store like a shoplifter, that type of thing. I remember a friend of mine from DC that asked a sales assistant why they didn’t have certain items in the Polo section. His point seemed to be that the Polo they sold down there was like 5 years ahead of what we had. I was just happy to buy the stuff personally but I eventually ventured out to find out for myself just how far Akron was behind, and have been jaded ever since.

It wasn’t anything that I was ever supposed to know, and that is exactly the experience that discounters have brought to shopping for the uninitiated. You aren’t really supposed to know about high end labels if the department stores in your town don’t sell them; you get obsessed with those labels, particularly in your twenties, and you end up doing stuff you shouldn’t to get them. When department stores ruled retail with an iron fist they stayed on a simple script and kept thing in a nice, clean, well maintained box. They didn’t confuse consumers, didn’t throw out the kitchen sink at bargain prices and didn’t tease anyone with a shipment from a designer they never got any other inventory from for a year and half. You knew you could afford Levi’s, you also knew that you could not afford Hugo Boss and probably did not know what it was, and you were okay with that there was no shame in it.

Today’s shopper knows entirely too much. No one really cares what their peers are doing, because everyone can research the information on it’s own. That isn’t a big deal until you consider that everyone is off doing their own thing. That sense of community is lost, it isn’t coming back again.

Except for adolescents that still dress alike in droves and legions of thousands. I’m sure they know well enough to find out what else is out there but they rarely do because the power of belonging is far more addictive than the power of knowing at times. In fact they’ll try to dumb themselves down and not come across as too smart, too much of an individual. Ah, what fond memories …