Shopping was such an automatic habit, a near lifetime one, but as it turns out, not that difficult to break. Like cutting French fries from your diet.

I’m talking about recreational shopping, something you did at lunch or when you had a few open hours on a weekend. Time to cruise the stores, just looking. But there’d usually be something to take home, that you didn’t really need but could rationalize. It looked good on you. You deserved it. It was such a deal. And you hadn’t had anything new in…a while.

But then the economy and consumer confidence dissolved. Frivolous shopping seemed not only unwise, but almost obscene. The least a person could do was draw a line at her own closet and the easiest way was to avoid temptation.

It helped that so many others in my endangered middle income group became practical at the same time. I’d ask a friend what she had bought lately and it was nothing much but the essentials. Food, of course, maybe some new tires, some necessity from the hardware store. Those who could still afford extras chose to keep their gym membership or their hair cutter rather than binge at the mall.

Who needed it, I said, but began looking forward to my friend’s semi-annual clothes swap in her backyard.

It was starting to feel like a long drought.

When I saw all the “buy local” signs pop up in store windows around town I realized that if Main Street started becoming vacant it was going to be bad for all of us. And there was my new rationalization.

I bought a wide faux leather belt. “Going for the Michele Obama look?” asked my daughter, which I took as a compliment and which would have been enough, in old times, to send me back to the store to buy one or two more in different colors. But I honored my new thrifty self and stuck with one. It cost $12, but it seemed to cheer the woman who sold it to me.

I thought of my mother who used to scour the church rummage sales for clothes with status labels and then get out her sewing machine and remodel them for herself. She was of that generation that also owned darning needles. No one threw out a pair of socks or a sweater just because it had a mere hole in it. Same with shoes. When a heel wore down you went to the cobblers, not to the shoe store.

I also bought a new pair of yoga pants. On sale, although more than I’d pay at one of the discount stores. But these came from a shop in walking distance from my house. The owners live in the community. The pants are of organic cotton, made in California. All good reasons to purchase.

I heard that in tough times women tend to buy black purses and not splurge on color. My daughter although, bought a green glittery wallet, but that was for luck, she said, to bring money into her life. That makes it more of a spiritual reason, I guess.

I wonder if our consumer society has been permanently altered by our economic terror? Or, if one day were Timothy Geithner to announce that consumer confidence had returned, the economy was rallying and we could all open our wallets again, would we rush the stores like an after-Christmas mob.

I hope not. Gluttony is so passe. So Hummer.

Tags: economics, Fashion, Juicy_Tomatoes, recession, recessionista, shopping, Susan_Swartz

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 at 10:27 am and is filed under Fashion, Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.