Mallin’ Rouge: Dressing Up for the Dress Shop

Daniel Miller also identified shopping as something that produces either pleasure or anxiety. There are some people who find pleasure in spending money. There are consumers who are considered “alternative”; these are individuals acting collectively or more frequently alone, to try to “recover some control over a world dominated by consumerism. Some representations of this are the vegans, vegetarians, anti-GMO buyers. What other shoppers do is abstain from creating a list but visit all the aisles in the supermarket so as not to forget anything (which is an advantage in creating a list) but at the same time, to be open to other alternative and suggested products (which is an advantage of listlessness).
There are also occasions when the ambience of a shop acts as a kind of frame intended to alter a shopper’s behavior in order to be appropriate to it. The mall allows shoppers to become the “ideal self”. Shoppers read the dominating culture inside the shop and try to follow it. They try out a persona or a style of behavior appropriate to the venue. One may act out and dress up differently in an up-market dress shop and a cheap shoe store. He/she also walks and talks differently when in a parlor as against a record bar. They watch other people’s actions and absorb that collective action themselves. And this is because they need “to get the feeling of being accepted and feeling comfortable to be in this certain public space” (“Land of Consumption: Shopping mall as a way of life”), which is the mall. If everybody dresses up like this, they’d follow the recourse because they feel that they are always being watched.
In the Trinidad ethnography done in 1997, the researcher found out that the shoppers constantly dwell upon the appraisal of other shoppers. They watch and comment on other people’s dress, bearing, body and language—and carefully watch their own, as well. This can be evidently seen in the time spent by shoppers in dressing for the shopping event. This is not only true for the shoppers, but also for those who just hang around in shopping malls.

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