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"  It&amp;#039;s only fitting that one of the marquee pieces in fashion mogul Fran\u00E7ois Pinault&amp;#039;s art collection is a piece by Barbara Kruger called Untitled (I shop therefore I am). For someone whose personal fortune and empire rely largely on the sale of luxury goods \u2014 Gucci bags, Yves Saint Laurent shoes, Balenciaga dresses \u2014 Kruger&amp;#039;s piece could read, &amp;quot;They shop therefore I am.&amp;quot; Yet in this economic clime, with retail sales plummeting every successive quarter and shoppers forced to curtail their retail spending or slash their luxury-goods budgets, a palpable tension in the industry has bubbled to the surface. The paradox of Kruger&amp;#039;s piece takes on a serious pall: Without sales, the entire fashion world, from big-name labels to the smaller ones just getting their foot in the door, will suffer. Perhaps Vera Wang summed it up best: &amp;quot;If people don&amp;#039;t shop, people lose their jobs.&amp;quot; Stefani Greenfield, a brand consultant and the cofounder of the Scoop stores \u2014 a woman who knows a thing or two about shopping \u2014 says, &amp;quot;There is more purpose now with every purchase.&amp;quot; She likens the current retail situation to when Mayor Rudy Giuliani raised a call to action after 9/11 for people to support New York City businesses. But now we need to shop to save the international fashion industry. Almost as a plea, she adds, &amp;quot;If you can spend and have the desire to, please do!&amp;quot; Ran Kivetz, a professor of marketing at Columbia Business School, puts it this way: &amp;quot;If you have the money, are secure financially, and have a stable income and savings, then yes, it can help [the economy]. Part of what we&amp;#039;re facing now is people are concerned and not buying; thus, the economy is contracting. So if people indulged responsibly, then it would help.&amp;quot; For many, however, the recession&amp;#039;s onset has marked a period of acute financial insecurity with precarious job markets and tanking 401(k)s.  The good news is that people are starting to understand that spending isn&amp;#039;t necessarily superficial. Actress Chlo\u00EB Sevigny is doing her part to keep the cash registers humming. &amp;quot;I realize this is how the shop owners make a living. We all have to support ourselves somehow,&amp;quot; she says, noting that when she shops secondhand and vintage, she never haggles over prices. Sevigny also knows that treating herself helps the retail industry, though she won&amp;#039;t spend willy-nilly. &amp;quot;When I do splurge, on things such as luggage at T. Anthony and Herm\u00E8s bits and bobs, I try to make sure they are items that will last. Classics,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;If anything, I&amp;#039;m spending more now.&amp;quot; Society doyenne Coco Kopelman agrees with Sevigny&amp;#039;s rationale: It&amp;#039;s good to buy as long as you&amp;#039;re buying good things. &amp;quot;A good coat, like a car, is an important purchase and will take you to many places for seasons to come,&amp;quot; she explains. &amp;quot;It pains me to see the demise of certain stores and FOR RENT signs dotting Madison Avenue. I have in some instances made a choice to patronize certain family-owned businesses.&amp;quot; Speaking of which, Margherita Missoni was in the Venice outpost of her family&amp;#039;s fashion house during the current Biennale, and she was thrilled. After a less-than-stellar retail period, it was full of women picking up full-on runway looks. &amp;quot;I am elated to see people buying,&amp;quot; Missoni says with a smile that might also read as relief. &amp;quot;At the beginning of this recession, we had a very dark perspective; I&amp;#039;m not saying we&amp;#039;re out of the dark yet, but people are definitely getting their confidence back.&amp;quot; As with most conversations about shopping in the recession, talk eventually turns to a now-infamous news article that claimed some New Yorkers were embarrassed by their luxury-goods purchases and would hide them in unmarked bags as they walked down Madison Avenue. &amp;quot;That was a very New York thing,&amp;quot; Missoni says of that mood and how it spread among the fashion set. &amp;quot;Almost like it was cool to talk about the recession \u2014 which I found extremely annoying. But it seems that now people are no longer embarrassed to have good things.&amp;quot; Texas couture client Becca Cason Thrash also found those stories frustrating. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve never been embarrassed to walk down Madison Avenue or Houston&amp;#039;s Galleria with a Louis Vuitton or Neiman Marcus shopping bag. I never will be embarrassed!&amp;quot; she proclaims. New designer Minnie Mortimer says that while a hiccup in spending is of course to be expected in economic turmoil, the &amp;quot;ridiculous&amp;quot; hubbub over being embarrassed about designer patronage was largely perpetuated by the media. She likens it to the fourth estate&amp;#039;s coverage of swine flu: &amp;quot;You watch CNN long enough and as soon as you sneeze, you&amp;#039;re calling yourself an ambulance.&amp;quot; She says she understands why people are anxious about spending, but she prefers to be optimistic about it. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s going to change the way people shop but won&amp;#039;t stop people from shopping,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Well, it won&amp;#039;t for me.&amp;quot; Mortimer is confident her American brethren will weather this. &amp;quot;We are really resilient,&amp;quot; she says, and as if to flaunt her optimistic bravado, she launched an eponymous clothing line earlier this year. For her, that means pairing her own line of affordable separates (her range is from $116 for a dress to $390 for a blazer) with designer products. Other people have their own metaphors for retail&amp;#039;s new atmosphere. Filmmaker Arden Wohl likens it to a fashion love affair. &amp;quot;It was a real relationship. Fashion was in music, in lyrics, in art, in Hollywood. Fashion was love,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;And then the recession happened and there was a nasty divorce.&amp;quot; It makes sense. It was like a good boyfriend who went out for a gallon of milk and never came back; many women forced themselves \u2014 because of shrunken budgets, because they were too shy to look opulent, or because they lost their jobs \u2014 to turn their backs on their designer bags, shoes, and dresses. &amp;quot;But the good news,&amp;quot; Wohl says, smiling, &amp;quot;is that it looks like we&amp;#039;re getting back together now.&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s not to say that this relationship will be as it was before. It&amp;#039;s a whole different retail world out there now on both sides of the cash register. In addition to going only for quality classics, ladies who love to shop are turning their attention from the dress to the earrings, bag, ring, belt, shoes, et cetera. According to Nevena Borissova, the founder and buyer of the Curve boutiques in Los Angeles, New York, and Miami, the reason accessories are becoming so important is that they can easily update a look. &amp;quot;People are buying basics in terms of clothes but really spending on jewelry. You can also buy a scarf or a belt and revamp an old piece in your closet.&amp;quot; She adds, &amp;quot;I actually spent more over the last year than ever before \u2014 to support the economy but also to buy some timeless pieces that hold their value: a Birkin, a Cartier, some vintage, and some diamonds.&amp;quot; To that end, celebrities in the limelight who previously shied away from stepping out in things twice are now catching on to what Bazaar has known all along: It&amp;#039;s chic to rewear your favorite pieces. Sevigny, for one, has worn variations of a tan Chlo\u00E9 shorts suit several times this summer, and no one batted an eyelash. Thrash also endorses multiple wears. &amp;quot;I have a cream Chanel jacket that I live in and a lightweight black Lanvin top with huge tufted shoulders. I have worn that 20 times,&amp;quot; she says of these obviously demonstrative looks. &amp;quot;I joke that you must amortize clothes that are expensive. Women who wear things once strike me as insecure.&amp;quot; \u00DCberdesigner Karl Lagerfeld urges women to use what they&amp;#039;ve got. He says, &amp;quot;Nobody is ever embarrassed to wear jeans twice, so it is a sad thing to think that somebody wears something beautiful only once. Wear it as long as you like it.&amp;quot; But the responsibility for shopping our way out of a recession, so to speak, won&amp;#039;t fall entirely on consumers&amp;#039; shoulders. Retailers too need to respond to the battle cry, says Kopelman. She&amp;#039;s petitioning for better window displays and &amp;quot;improved service \u2014 for the sales staff to be welcoming, helpful, kind. The shopkeeper&amp;#039;s icy attitude so famously captured in Pretty Woman no longer has a place in this world,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I miss the Henri Bendel of yesteryear and its Street of Shops, where shopping was an adventure and an exciting experience even for a modest purchase.&amp;quot; Aizel Trudel, the founder of the Landau Fashion Group in Moscow, which operates that city&amp;#039;s Diane von Furstenberg and Christian Louboutin stores, among others, employs stylists to help assure customers they&amp;#039;re making the right choice. &amp;quot;Before the recession, I could sell 10 Balmain dresses and 10 Christian Louboutin shoes to go with them at once. Today that customer might buy half as much,&amp;quot; she explains, adding that a good visual is key. &amp;quot;We have more window-shopping, which usually ends up with a purchase.&amp;quot; But she&amp;#039;s not complaining; a buy is a buy, no matter how small. Indeed, when people have the desire to shop again and their choices are limited by circumstance, a case of fashion Darwinism emerges, in which only the strongest brands or those most willing to evolve and roll with the punches will survive. &amp;quot;And that is probably the only positive thing about the crisis,&amp;quot; says Trudel. Positive for the health of labels and retailers as well as consumer pockets. Brands like Dolce &amp;amp;amp; Gabbana recently announced they would reduce their pricing schemes for future collections, something Lanvin is already doing. But bottom lines aside, there is something restorative about shopping; it strengthens industry health and lifts consumer spirits. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s called retail therapy,&amp;quot; explains Borissova. &amp;quot;Nothing makes you feel better faster than a new little something.&amp;quot; As Maggie Betts, a woman-about-town and a documentarian, explains, &amp;quot;Consumer spending needs to be supported and not vilified.&amp;quot; Betts, who supports both young designers like Prabal Gurung and more established names like Max Azria, proves she has a firm grip on the situation. &amp;quot;Yes, there is something disconnected about turning on the TV and seeing hundreds of people waiting on unemployment lines in Detroit and then trotting over to Herm\u00E8s,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;But you can&amp;#039;t ignore the importance of consumer spending at a time like this. If it happens that a Birkin turns out to be someone&amp;#039;s unique way of helping rebound a struggling economy, then I say don&amp;#039;t feel guilty about it, girlfriend. Buy it! And carry a flag while you do it!&amp;quot; Or at least a glossy shopping bag. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/trends/a409/derek-blasberg-on-shopping-0909/>