Ruehl is closing in another month or two? You still have December, 2009 at Tyson's mall to go and get what is left from what I have heard in the past ...
PART TWO :
I started this blog awhile ago and have just come back to it. I scanned what I wrote and I realize that I was so heated in my thinking at the time that my thoughts rushed way ahead of my typing hands and so what I got in the last paragraph has to be both remembered and deciphered by me and I am not sure that I am up to that just yet on this cold and damp, biting wet Monday evening, November 30th, 2009 at 8:26 PM here at our home in northern Virginia. I may just leave it like it is as a rambling of semi-incoherence to show perhaps what the mind is reduced to in a store like Ruehl where one buys into their image so much that one becomes quite numb and a touch babbling. Not good, no - that's not a state that I ever want to find myself in : especially if it was nor motivated or engineered by me.
I also want to publish now sooner than later as RUEHL is soon to not rule the universe anymore. In some ways I am sad for that as I have appreciated their art of display and order and vision of space and time and eventual mind/mood-set. They have done their homework brilliantly and really captured the minds and limited and also dulled from my humble point of view their customers. Drone, drones, droning along quite contentedly as they may be they have given up a real integral and important part of their personality and decision-making and given it over to a large corporation that is making money as they set their own particular sights and vision that borders on a group narcissism of like-dressed/like-expressed on the outside in clothes at least set of people that acquiesced and bought and paid dearly for such vision. Sad.
Where have all the individuals gone? Where have all the assertive, bold and strong wills gone that should for their very survival be making these key decisions on their own and not relegating them to a large corporation who's main goal is to breed more like-minded/gullible people and make more and more money as a result?!?
I have enjoyed going with my son and visiting stores like RUEHL. It has been one grand learning experience for me as I walk through the various dimly-lit, perfumed, displayed and music-filled rooms as I do feel just a twinge of self-consciousness for both my age as well as that I may be summarily be judged and dismissed outright for my " old man " look and demeanor. That's okay : I will survive.
I will add more soon but for now I will post this.
PART ONE :
I was just thinking about the world of retail and advertising and my one store versus that of many stores such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Ruehl and Hollister. I think it occurred to me as we were driving back from the beach in North Carolina a week or so ago. These other stores ( not my one small store in Washington D.C. ) are about crafting the perfect image for all of us in the world willing to buy into their conceit/dream/fantasy/fabrication-of-fabrications/of-the-moment : as if there was only one moment ever that counts and that is this exact moment!
Aaaahhhh, I buy into the idea of the moment being important and fully appreciated by us all: but there is where I part from the people that thought up, conceived, delivered and brought us their three stores where everything is just so and thus and like this and perfect in nearly every way that the casual as well as trained eye can or is willing or trying to see!
Everything at Ruehl is constantly tweaked and arranged and ordered and crafted, molded and orchestrated. It all looks so grand , so clean, so fresh, so perfectly wonderful in all it's colors and statements and allure. It just all looks so good to the senses of sight and sound and in some cases smell, too. These displays of theirs do everything except actually superimpose their clothes onto yours for you! Wow, when and if they can do that then their sales will probably go through the roof. You have to actually decide to mess up their perfect displays when you pick something out to look at further. This inspection of yours is immediately rectified if you move on with an item or leave it for possibly another. You can't see all the nearly invisible people working there but they appear as if almost by magic once something is disturbed.
I can just hear them sighing and saying : " Oh, why must there have to be this disruption at all? Why must the customer have to disturb our hard work? Why can't they just find us so that we can with the least amount of disruption pick the item that they are interested in and thus cause us less work?!? "
PART TWO : continued ...
I feel your pain sales people, really I do. You all work very hard to continue this immaculate illusion of yours in each and every room of your stores. And you do a great job and are very polite and really quite out of the picture so to speak. You do not disturb us or the illusion that is going all around us. You let it be as pristine and as much as if it is like this for us and only us ; as if for the very first time each and every time ... illusions built on illusions and more illusions/delusions/ ... and intrusions slight and deft and calibrated and subtle as can be as not to disturb as you make us in effect one of you - one of your select group with a select vision.
Brilliant really : kudos to you all. You have done something pretty amazing and many of us are willing and more than glad to buy into your world of clothes, perfumes,scents, body lotions - notions and potions and motions to make us all quite literally just like you in your world.
What happens when we leave your perfectly ordered and orchestrated world and have to go back into our world of chance and disorder and messiness and compromises and so many more things that we have to react to/process/ digest/live with/contend with and do the very best to survive and get along with?!?
Ahhhhh .... the answer is for us to rush back for more in your perfectly orchestrated and tranquil and programed-for-us-willing-to-pay-your-expensive-prices world ...
I'm an artist and really quite an open-minded individual that is willing to mostly always see first the positive before the negative. I also like to start with the positive first before starting in with anything negative. Live and let live is my motto. I have a positive outlook on life and will till I die.
I regret to have to sound so serious and to rain so to speak on your parades but I feel I must. There, I've spoken some of my peace. I'm afraid there will be more.
Cheers, TONY
PART ONE :
It's all such a spectacle, all such an image of perfection that we are all being fed quite firmly if quite subliminally : make no mistake : this is serious business and it is designed to suck as all into their world of clothes, logos, and dreams - theirs, not ours. We are buying completely their idea/dream/fantasy/insistence that to be ourselves we have to buy their perfectly displayed and orchestrated clothes accompanied by both the bare skin of tanned young almost naked boys and girls that are legal yet?!?
PART TWO :
Don't get me wrong: I know that they the models are of a legal age but what about the young customers that they are aiming to sell their merchandise to?
To me in my humble opinion that I know you do not want to hear : they are pretty defenseless to the subtle and so very calculated and pervasive onslaught of your perfect world and life-style/choice that you sell actively/overtly as well as with dead earnestness of a consummate business person ... quietly and subliminally ...
But as I have already said : live and let live ... with just a little adult intervention here and there. It may make a difference? Hard to say ... I do, however feel better having expressed myself on these issues that I direct to many business models and not just to RUEHL ... we need to change our thinking about this. We are after all dealing with all of our children and our world, too ... TONY
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