Before the pandemic, I would go window shopping. Now, I go screen shopping.
Man, I miss window shopping.
The beauty of window shopping is that each store is designed as a portal into a new world. Growing up, I remember spending afternoons popping from store to store with my mom, gazing into the windows, imagining myself in the worlds that they conjured. I especially enjoyed the windows at Ralph Lauren because they employed a cinematic level of detail that conveyed the feeling and fantasy of the collection. I can picture a mannequin dressed in soft velvet pants, a crisp white button-up shirt, and a belted wool Pendleton blanket sweater, paired with worn-in boots and a satin black bowtie drawn neatly at the neck. The window was designed to complement the clothes, and was outfitted with a rich mahogany mantel dressed in green garlands dripping with red berries and pinecones. Bookended by two stone pillars, another mannequin sat cross legged on leather green trunks in a beautiful all-black monochrome look. A sprinkling of little details completed the world, from framed black-and-white photos and lightly drawn sketches, to rolled up notes, a fur pelt, wooden skis, and candles flickering behind glass, illuminating books and bobbles beautifully arranged in the foreground. By themselves, the outfits convey the Ralph Lauren vision, combining the regal style of an English gentleman with the wild flair of a Western cowboy. Yet, the elements in the window display that aren’t for sale are what successfully conjure the complete world, and what sparked my younger self to want to work in fashion.
In a lot of ways, the stores with the best window shopping can be abstractly thought of as mood boards come to life.
Ralph Lauren translates the visual references that inspired his collections and reconstructs them physically into the design of the store for shoppers to enjoy. Yet, the Ralph Lauren website does not conjure Ralph's vision as successfully online. It is no longer a special shopping experience, and feels more commercial and standardized by design. Online, it is much harder to imagine yourself within the world he creates so beautifully in his fashion shows and in store.
Bergdorf's Beautiful Holiday Windows
Bergdorf Goodman's holiday windows are a tour de force of craftsmanship and delicate handiwork, taking eleven months to complete. When the holiday windows were unveiled, I remember making multiple visits playing eye spy with friends, uncovering new details with every visit. In store, Bergdorf Goodman creates a magical shopping experience. Beyond the windows, inside every hanger is perfectly spaced out and every accessory beautifully arranged in sumptuous surroundings.
Yet, online, Begdorf Goodman no longer feels like Bergdorf Goodman. It has lost the design details that make it special and luxurious. While the store windows transport shoppers into a fantastic world, the opening page of the site has a boring design, flashing "Extra 30% of Sale" across the top. It's nearly impossible to differentiate between Bergdorf Goodman's online shopping experience from a fast fashion site such as Zara. Bergdorf Goodman's website feels cheap and consumerist when compared to the inspiring and decadent atmosphere beautifully articulated in store.
As you can see from the six retailers included below, most online fashion sites resemble one another. There is very little differentiation between Zara's shopping experience and Farfetch. Yet, Zara sells cheap clothing while Farfetch stocks only luxury designers.
The trade-offs of shopping in store vs. online
So far, the visual design of in-person stores far surpasses online shopping. However, there are aspects of online shopping that I find even more fun and enjoyable than in-person shopping. Shopping online, I can scroll through hundreds of garments in a matter of minutes, while in store the same task would take me all day. Also, I can peruse any luxury store I please without feeling intimidated, and I don't have the uncomfortable feeling of being surveyed by salespeople. A big part of the fun of online shopping is that I can add whatever I want to my cart, imagining the perfect occasions to wear my shopping finds. Even though the experience of shopping in person inspires me more, online shopping has become part of my daily routine, and I spend hours scrolling, discovering new fashion finds, and sharing with friends.
Over the past couple of years, The Business of Fashion has projected that virtual reality will be the next frontier for online shopping. Yet, the joys of online shopping would be lost in virtual reality. In virtual reality, I would no longer be able to scroll through hundreds of garments at a time. I would have to laboriously sift through garments without being able to feel them and try them on. Purely translating the in-store shopping experience into virtual reality would compromise the best aspects of both shopping experiences.
Instead, I am interested in thinking about how online shopping can be redesigned visually in order to be inspiring and luxurious, fun and shareable. If Ralph Lauren and Bergdorf Goodman are able to design store windows that evoke an escapist fantasy, then why can't their online storefronts do the same? How can online shopping be redesigned to transport shoppers into another world?
These questions spurred me to think beyond just the shopping experience of the online storefront to social media as well -- the other way that shoppers engage with their favorite stores. Both Ralph Lauren's and Bergdorf Goodman's Instagram accounts do a far better job of translating their design vision. The key to their Instagram success is that they post images that fit into the visual world of the brand in addition to images that are directly shoppable.
However, Instagram is still not the perfect solution. On Instagram, the way I most often engage with brands is by scrolling through my feed rather than by visiting their personal pages directly. While Instagram's grid is so successful because it mimics a mood board, translating the values and vision of the brand through juxtaposing lots of pictures together, scrolling through solo pictures feels more like paging through advertisements.
This insight led me to Pinterest -- the social media site mood board site.
On Pinterest, both Ralph Lauren and Bergdorf Goodman's posts did not look as luxurious as on Instagram. The irony is that all fashion designers make mood boards prior to every collection -- pulling together fabrics, buttons, old photographs, reference photos, and sketches. Mood boards are the visual references for everyone on the design team, and are the jumping off point for every collection. I can imagine what Ralph Lauren's personal mood boards look like -- worn cowboy boots discovered on trips, old pictures from growing up in the Bronx, and film stills portraying Hollywood glamour. Yet, there is a lot of potential within a mood board social media site to be able to create a luxurious interface for products while still allowing users the freedom to have fun creating more customizable mood boards.
My interest in online shopping has led me to conduct my own investigations into how a mood board social media site could combine the inspiring feel of window shopping with the fun and shareable nature of online shopping. Through my investigations, I have explored how an infinite scroll of products can be made to feel luxurious through color gradations that convey the passing of time and further the feeling of discovery, and I have also played with how editing tools can give shoppers more freedom to create mood boards that feel personalized.