There’s a great article in the December 1996 issue of Vogue by Katherine Betts titled “Passion for Fashion”. The article is illustrated with women such as Meg Ryan, Sandra Bullock, and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy toting along black Barneys New York shopping bags. In one image, a horde of shoppers with bags in the crooks of their arms gazed into a store window where the designer Giorgio Armani was styling Ashley Judd for all to see. The article is a poetic rebuttal to a shopaholic doomsday piece by The New York Times that reported that women were over shopping. They were, allegedly, buying toasters instead of metallic Manolo Blahnik sandals. Quelle horreur! To really see if shopping was donezo, Betts headed to New York City’s mammoth department stores and freshly opened mega boutiques and watched as women bought and consumed. The Times was wrong! Screw toasters Ladies were crammed in Giorgio Armani’s freshly opened Madison Avenue like sardines. At Prada, hoards of chicks were sliding their credit cards across the counter. The most important accessory was a branded shopping bag on every arm. The shopping scenes that Betts describes is an apocalyptic mess of chic. These women aren’t gatherers…these are hunters, trying to track down a perfect strappy Jimmy Choo heel or the latest Prada nylon backpack. But Betts detailed more than a shopping bender She saw women out in the world not only shopping but also being out in the world.
Naomi Campbell after shopping at Barneys in New York City, December 9, 1999. Arnaldo MagnaniBetts’s article describes a yearning that I get when I spot a woman walking with a shopping bag. There’s a certain throw caution to the wind mood that surrounds a big shopping bag. How many times have we seen a carefree Carrie Bradshaw traipsing around the city in a tutu with an armful of shopping bags with only a declined credit card to her name? She’s in a limbo of happiness. And those Real Housewives biddies from whatever city they hail from, drunk with their endless bags on their endless arms. They seem to be having fun. The same goes for those late ‘90s and ‘00s paparazzi shots of celebrities shopping Mariah Carey. Madonna. Janet Jackson. Hell, the other day the Instagram account @gettyimagesfanclub posted a lone photo of ’Molly Ringwald walking around New York in the 1990s with a humble brown Banana Republic bag. She looked incredible toting that disposable accessory around.
Comments