Is Shopping in Crisis? Uncover the Shocking Truth Behind Today’s Retail Struggles

Last week, I was mulling over a pitch about the state of shopping. The idea was inspired by my sense that the pursuit of style, which once felt quite social, playful, and experimental to me (e.g. “going shopping” with my friends), had been replaced with something solitary, prescriptive, and regimented—the endless scroll for the best thing. Interestingly but unsurprisingly, this approach to consumption that masquerades as “optimization” doesn’t necessarily lead to a better experience, but often an overwhelming and sexless one. There was, however, a slim possibility that I was just pregnant and mad at my closet (and all clothing in general).

As I turned over the idea, I thought of my good friend Harling Ross Anton and her fashion newsletter Gumshoe, which is about shopping thoughtfully. Was the premise of her work somehow in conflict with my nostalgia for a looser approach? I asked if she’d be interested in talking about this with me for Maybe Baby, and thankfully she said yes. Below is our conversation covering the tension between a free and loose approach to style and a more curatorial one, the occupational hazard of freebies and affiliate marketing, and, finally, a synthesis between our two perspectives.

Please enjoy the imagery produced by the dizzying number of photoshoots Harling and I did between 2017 and 2019, a period during which we devised many mystifying dress codes. This post might be too long for email, in which case you can view it in full online. It’s also just long…in general. This one’s for the style heads.

HALEY

It feels right that we’re having this convo over text because of how much we already text. Typing paragraphs to you comes so naturally lol.

I was inspired to bring you on because last week while I was conceiving of an essay about shopping I realized that my thesis was in part straining against the thesis of your shopping newsletter (Gumshoe, which I love and abide by philosophically). The basic premise was that I miss shopping, and I miss my relationship with style when it was a little more free-wheeling and curious and exploratory and less laser-focused on carefully building my wardrobe. Like, going to Forever21 with my friends in college and having absolutely no idea what we were going to get and bringing heaps of clothes into the dressing rooms and falling in love with the most random stuff or else crying laughing at how bad some things were. Obviously my style was atrocious at the time, and my shopping habits were so wasteful. It’s no way to build a wardrobe or treat the planet!!

But I noticed recently—and there are a variety of factors at play here, both societal and personal—that my relationship with style now is a lot more strained and precise. I worry about finding the perfect thing. I look forever and never know if I’ve found it and end up waiting so long to pull the trigger that I stop knowing what I like anymore. There seem to be unlimited places where I could look for something. I largely shop alone, on my computer. The social and playful aspects are gone, and I feel the void of that at times. (Also most things suck in quality and I don’t know what to trust, although that’s a whole different conversation.) So my question to you or to both of us is: Where did the fun go and why, and is it possible to rediscover it without bringing back all the baggage of that super wasteful era of my life as a consumer? If so, how?

Let me hit you with a more specific question to start though: For people who aren’t aware, what is the premise of Gumshoe and how did you land on it? Did it feel like a response in some ways to how you covered style at Man Repeller, or how you related to style before that period as just a lover of fashion or an amateur blogger?

HARLING

Hi! I love you. I’m so glad we’re having this convo. It feels very full-circle to be reflecting on shopping and style together now, exactly 10 years after we met working at a fashion blog!! Both of our senses have evolved so much since then (I think unequivocally for the better, lol).

A little background on why I started Gumshoe and why its ethos might be relevant here: It came out of two things colliding. The first thing was moving into my thirties and landing in a much healthier relationship with shopping, eschewing fast fashion in favor of secondhand and natural fibers, things I knew would actually last. The second thing was a frustration I kept running into as a freelancer. So much of the work I was doing for legacy outlets came with pressure to build shopping roundups in service of affiliate goals—fewer secondhand picks, more new-and-currently-shoppable, ideally with a high commission for the publishers. I started craving a platform where I could write about what actually interested me as a reader and a shopper: Etsy rabbit holes, wardrobe workhorses, pieces that might not even be shoppable anymore but still say something about what makes an outfit great. I also started it because I LOVE doing the stuff that a lot of people (maybe you included) either aren’t interested in or don’t have time for or both, i.e. scrolling through endless pages of The RealReal until I find the most wonderful random thing, and I figured some of the stuff I’ve learned through that process could be interesting to write about.

Something you’re prompting me to think about is whether being a super thoughtful shopper, in an ideal world, can also be supportive of whimsy and impulse. I don’t think I have explicitly touched on that question in my writing for Gumshoe.

HALEY

Okay, yes, exactly. This also makes me want to clarify why I described my essay thesis as straining against the thesis of your newsletter, because that might not be totally fair. In practice I think your relationship with style feels extremely fun and whimsical! Maybe primarily because of the places you find things and how you put them together. Where I think the tension exists for me is in the more philosophical underpinning of your newsletter, which is that we ought to shop slowly and carefully with an eye toward building a sustainable wardrobe that we can conceivably love and work with for a long time. Obviously a good idea I agree with! The term “building” feels especially important here, almost like your wardrobe is a curation or collection that is developed with a really keen eye toward a broader vision. This is also the part that feels intimidating to me sometimes. Like, I want that! But it’s a lot of pressure.

Reminds me of a few months ago when I asked if you ever bought things that you regret—things that make you think, who do I think I am??? Because I STILL do that sometimes, and when I do, often my first thought, even if it’s like below my conscious awareness is: Harling would never.

HARLING

I do buy things I regret sometimes, but I think what I told you at the time is that at this point it’s rare. Being a thoughtful shopper, in addition to being a passion of mine, is also literally my JOB, so that’s part of why I’ve honed the skill. Like, I wish I was as engaged with culture and news and had thoughtful takes on those topics like you do, but that’s your job and that’s part of why you’re so good at it. I’m not saying I’m “incredible” at shopping lol but you know what I mean. I don’t think everyone has to obsess over hundreds of pages of secondhand items in order to have a solid approach most of the time. I think it’s more about your overall strategy and goals than it is about how much time you’re spending considering every purchase.

I also remember mentioning to you that I think receiving free things from brands, which I do on occasion, also makes it easier for me to experiment, and I didn’t want to get on a high horse and weigh in on your predicament without pointing that out!

HALEY

Oh yeah I was really interested in you mentioning freebies. Because we talked so much back in our Man Repeller days about the upsides and downsides of “the swag pile.” I used to say I think the free clothes, despite being such a windfall that I was absolutely starry-eyed over, probably ultimately made my style worse, because I was always wearing the most random stuff and never buying anything for myself because I couldn’t justify it and also was not making a lot of money. But you describing it as a venue for surprise and experimentation totally resonated. There’s that tension again—my wardrobe might have been made worse by freebies, and yet they were also very fun to get, and led a certain levity to getting dressed. It felt like playing dress-up a lot.

Curious how you feel about press gifts these days. Does it feel different from MR press gifting?

HARLING

It does feel different. Back then brands would just send mountains of stuff to our office, and we were young and excited and basically just took everything home with us because it was FREE, and I agree this made our style a lot worse. Still, we were always marveling at our luck. It was very fun! But I do think it made my style less personal and more shaped by random outside forces. Now brands always reach out to ask if I would like to receive something before sending it, and I’m extremely selective about what I say yes to because I don’t want to be wasteful. I probably decline 95% of gifting now.

I try to be honest with myself about the ways gifting can both aid and compromise my goals as a style writer. I appreciate how it helps me cast a wider net in terms of personally vetting things than I would be able to otherwise. I’m not really interested in reading endless shopping round-ups of things someone hasn’t personally tried on and lived in. It’s not as interesting or helpful. The free pieces I get give me more material to work with on that front. But they also make my wardrobe larger and more varied than it would be otherwise, and therefore less relatable.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy getting free things… I love clothes, and I’m human!! But I understand why the free stuff economy gets a bad rap, even if it’s not unique to fashion. Book critics receive advance copies, film critics attend free screenings, many restaurant reviewers are comped. People are right to be suspicious of how it can affect the content they consume. In an ideal world. getting free access to things would expand your knowledge base though not change your standards, but that’s just not always the case. I think about this a lot because the idea of recklessly endorsing something makes me sick to my stomach!

HALEY

That reticence definitely comes through imo. I can tell how picky you are in your style!! Which is so clear-eyed these days. (I’ve never loved your style more than I do now.) I actually think gifting probably inspired a lot of our cynicism coming out of MR, because we saw the way it warped fashion media. When someone is getting a lot of free stuff and is just kind of riding the novelty wave, I think it def shows up in their style. In that way gifting has the same hazards as like…those Forever21 trips in college.

HARLING

Totally. And you’re right, people are smart and can almost always tell when someone is wearing an outfit of entirely new, unvetted things. Sometimes in photos you can still see the creases on the shirt from being folded in the package lol

HALEY

Those creases always devastate me…

To be fair though I don’t think people who are constantly recommending new stuff are always doing so cynically. New stuff DOES feel so nice compared to old stuff, it’s easy to mistake it for “better.” This is basically the entire underpinning of the fashion industrial complex. I guess it does come back to goals and remembering what you’re aiming for long-term, which I think most of us forget.

HARLING

I’m not trying to make it seem like I’m perfect, but it’s something I’m always giving a lot of thought. I also want my writing to focus just as much (if not more) on the relationship we have with our existing clothes vs buying new ones, so I don’t think I have the same pressure as other fashion writers might to constantly try out and write about new stuff, which is nice.

I love to talk about analyzing the details of your own wardrobe almost like you’re an anthropologist. Paying attention to the fabrics that you love and that last, the silhouettes or particular details that suit your body, the brands you keep returning to. Once you encode that information into your brain and it starts informing the way you shop and get dressed, I think it overrides the sheen of newness. In other words, those are the things that will jump out to you and feel special, regardless of how old or new.

HALEY

You seem to have such a precise understanding of what you like and how to translate that for yourself, which I really admire! I think I have a pretty strong sensibility but maybe a somewhat weaker sense for how to translate that for myself, or maybe a penchant for getting distracted in the process of that translation.

I think there’s this fantasy that, if you shop well enough, you will never hem and haw while getting dressed. That every time you get dressed it will just come together perfectly because you’ve done all the work upfront. But I’m sure you still feel poorly dressed sometimes! (praying)

HARLING

10000%. Especially now that I’m a mom. I simply do not have time to stand in front of my closet and get my outfit perfect every day. That’s why I repeat outfits so much. The stylist Reva Luft says something I love: If you don’t know what to wear, put on something you wore yesterday. Not necessarily the whole outfit but a piece of it, and go from there.

Also, don’t you think occasionally wearing bad outfits actually kind of helps make your style better?? Like, it helps clarify things because it’s that tension that evolves your style and pushes it forward? That’s what I tell myself whenever I hate what I’m wearing: at least it’s teaching me something!!!!

HALEY

I need to take on this mindset. Maybe it’s just the phase I’m in that’s making me pessimistic or less able to draw useful conclusions. I’m pregnant, unable to access 80% of my wardrobe in the peak of summer, a season I’ve never really liked getting dressed for anyway, none of which can be discounted. But sometimes I feel like I’m also in an era of my life more broadly speaking (just parenthood? getting older? both?) where I don’t feel like I have the time or energy to approach my wardrobe like—to use your word—an anthropologist. And so then I end up kind of lapsing on the whole style endeavor and end up missing when it felt easier or something. Or more…fun to shop?

Do you ever miss the more social/improvisational aspects of shopping? Remember just “going shopping”? (What a concept.)

HARLING

Okay, to be honest, no, I don’t miss it that much, and maybe that makes me weird, but I always disliked the sunk cost fallacy of buying something just because I made the effort to go to the sample sale, or the store, or whatever it was. I don’t run into that when I’m shopping online. I have more nostalgia for simply being in my twenties and having the time to just kill a whole afternoon goofing around with my friends—the shopping part is secondary. I don’t like that this is my answer but it’s the truth!! I wish I was someone who romanticized shopping in person more. But I love efficiency.

Do you feel like you get the same buzz that you did shopping with friends in your teens/twenties if you’re like…wearing a cute outfit out to dinner now with a group of girlfriends who all care about or engage in style in some way? I feel like that’s a big vehicle for me.

HALEY

I wouldn’t say that quite feels the same to me. Maybe more like “getting ready together”? Trying things on, being like, “does this look right,” lending each other clothes, etc. That feeling of communal style engagement versus just assessing the finished product because you met up after you all get ready alone.

HARLING

Fair point. But again that feels like such a part of that era of life in general even apart from clothes!

HALEY

Totally. Am I just being nostalgic for youth? I still get it sometimes when I’m visiting my sister or am on a trip with people or I’ll force it on a friend by coming over before we go somewhere to “finish getting ready together.” Even though all we’re doing is like, putting on earrings.

HARLING

I also feel like we got some of that from just working in the Man Repeller office and showing up in our outfits and kind of analyzing what we were wearing in real time every day, which was so fun. Nostalgia for youth and office life.

HALEY

Oh yes that was such a fun side of working at MR! When do you think getting dressed or shopping feels most fun to you now?

HARLING

I think it’s when I have the chance to really play around with stuff in my closet and land on something I feel excited about and then going out in the world and being around people who notice, which is making me think about your original point about the Forever21 dressing rooms. The fun part wasn’t necessarily the buying (even though of course getting something new is fun), it was the looseness.

HALEY

So funny that Forever21, the store from hell, has become the bastion of fashion fun in this convo. Sorry about that!

Okay but yes, what I’m hearing is like…getting dressed is most fun for you when you have TIME. Maybe that’s the real crux of my issue these days—that my relationship with style feels constrained across several different metrics. It’s just not fun when it feels like that, which comes across in my style, and then I blame my wardrobe rather than the circumstances of my life, and assume that I need to be thinking harder to dress better, and I don’t have time to do that, and then I’m annoyed. I assume this is why fashion can feel like a luxurious hobby sometimes. You need to have a little bit of time to enjoy it?

Shit, it’s 6pm. We both have to pause and take care of our kids now, which is ironic.

HARLING

Poetic. Let’s pick this back up later!!!

[LATER]

HARLING

Hi circling back! Just to recap: You miss when shopping used to feel loose and fun but the downside was that it was wasteful and your closet was crazy. Now you’re not over-consuming anymore, but trying to evolve your wardrobe feels high-pressure and stressful because you’re shorter on time and your standards are higher.

When was the last time you cleaned out your closet? I feel like I remember you saying you went too far during a closet sale a few years ago and sold too much and you’ve been scared to purge ever since.

HALEY

Yes! I can’t believe how heavy my hand was. I think sometimes when I’m cleaning out my closet, I mistake my current mood for my now-permanent preferences—a kind of recency bias I guess—and end up paring my closet back to an inflexible degree, which in turn makes me have less to experiment and play with as my moods change (and also as trends start to trickle into my preferences whether I like it or not).

Reminds me of the idea that I think we’ve discussed before that there’s always some stylist or influencer out there who is claiming something that is actually trendy is a “classic” simply because it feels classic in this particular moment, and because there happen to exist some vintage photos of people wearing said thing. I think sometimes it can be hard to see beyond our current tastes and self-conceptions. This can make the project of building a “life-long wardrobe” feel treacherous.

Maybe a better term than recency bias is end-of-history illusion, which if you recall is (pardon Google copy-paste) “a cognitive bias where people recognize how much their values, personality, and tastes have changed in the past, but incorrectly believe their current self is fully formed and will change very little in the future.” I suspect this is what your newsletter is trying to hedge against. Like you’re trying to help people understand their style through a more strategic lens than their temporary emotional whims, which is obviously very needed.

Maybe I’m just mourning using the emotional whims as a weathervane because they’re more fun…but I will concede the point. I think you would probably say this work isn’t supposed to constrain creativity but to use constraints in a way that can inspire creativity, and most importantly inspire less waste. Which is vital not just for systemic climate reasons but for personally philosophical ones. Consumption as a heat-seeking novelty missile is a plague on the human soul!

HARLING

I am dying to come over and help you clean out your closet!!! I feel like it could be helpful to have a sounding board next time you do it given the recency bias fear you mentioned, which I totally understand. It’s easy to mistake mood for permanent preference and it goes back to what we were talking about earlier in terms of the fantasy that there’s a final, “correct” version of your personal style and if you work hard enough you can realize it, when in reality I think there’s always something new and interesting to learn about our taste. Even though I’m a pretty ruthless closet purger, I also think it’s okay for a closet to have a little slack in it—things that might not work for you right now but your gut is still telling you to keep.

HALEY

Yes I need you to whip me into shape!! Let’s do it in…five months.

Setting my own hang-ups aside, I think it might be interesting to take this conversation to a more macro level, because something we haven’t really gotten into are the parallels that exist between the state of shopping and the state of other normal human activities. The transition of “used to be fun and social and experimental but now exists on a feed and is primed for optimization” feels broadly familiar. Obviously we can try to push against this by making personal tweaks, but I do think it’s worth acknowledging these larger cultural forces that are sapping what used to be messy and lively endeavors into something more strategic and (supposedly) streamlined.

Curious what you think about the constant posts coming out of, say, The Strategist, about “the best white t-shirt” or “the best jeans” or whatever. I have a theory that they’re parading as streamlined and strategic but are covertly speaking to whims and trends. Trying to scratch both itches at once! Something about them feels dishonest and sexless.

HARLING

I never click on those Strategist-type posts. I really only care about “best of” recommendations that come from specific people I follow and trust who I know aren’t saying that about a new t-shirt every other month, or via word of mouth from friends…which I feel like is the case for most people? My sense is that everyone is much more wary now of how things like gifting and affiliate marketing and brand relationships impact recommendation culture online, because it can be so obvious.

HALEY

At least the savviest people are! I was really fascinated by that Substack piece about how certain affiliate brands will push certain products to influencers and then suddenly they’re all recommending the same thing at the same time, but couched in spontaneous-feeling language? And by push I mean there will be firesales where you get a higher commission for a certain thing for a limited time or something. Did you read that? [Ed note: After much hunting I could not find the piece I am referencing! But this one by Emilia Petrarca covers the same concept and might be even more thorough.]

HARLING

I am definitely aware of that happening! It’s one of the reasons why I was really hesitant to use affiliate links at first in Gumshoe, because I understand why readers might be suspicious of them. I just started introducing them this year because I felt like I’d built up enough trust at this point that it would be okay, and I also like having the analytics that show what kinds of pieces and price points my readers are most drawn to. I loved that piece Emilia wrote and also this one by Kelly Williams. I’m glad there’s more information out there about how all of this stuff works.

HALEY

Me too. If I recall correctly there was a lot of talk a couple years ago about the role affiliate marketing played in the High Sport pants mania. Apparently the commission was huge, and everyone was highly incentivized to link them!

HARLING

Oh that’s SO interesting, I didn’t know that.

HALEY

Shout out to you still being a huge High Sport pants fan. Your purity shines through.

HALRING

😂 They never gifted me, for the record.

HALEY

You deserve a pair lol

HARLING

I think it’s interesting that you’ve been feeling such a block when it comes to your personal style lately because, especially as I look back on the decade that I’ve known you and the evolution of your style during that time, I feel like you’ve honed it so much. You’re much less susceptible to trends now, there’s a lot more consistency with the colors and silhouettes you gravitate toward. I love how you’ve leaned into a more androgynous aesthetic now than you had in your twenties. I feel like I could look at an item of clothing and immediately identify whether it would suit you, which to me says you have a very distinct sense of style. So I guess I’m wondering how much of this current state you’re in feels influenced by being pregnant? Did you feel this way before getting pregnant?

HALEY

Omg bless you. It’s funny how you can feel blind to the specificity of your own style just by nature of living inside it for so long. But anyway, yes, a lot of this ennui is inspired by pregnancy. I hate getting dressed while pregnant. I just don’t feel like it’s well-suited to my taste (which usually guides me toward more structured/tailored/less feminine things, which are obviously out of step with pregnancy lol?).

As for how much of this was present beforehand, I think a few factors have been in play. As a parent, I have a lot less time to shop so studiously, or even to play around with my closet all that much, two constraints that are happening at the same time as my standards are increasing for what I wear and buy. There’s a lot of content out there that’s trying to solve for this—e.g. capsule wardrobes—but it always seems to involve buying more stuff or, in my case, lying to myself about how limited of a palette I’m willing to work with. Sometimes it feels like the only solution is to just lower my standards and think about something else, which is kind of a bummer (with the upside of saving me money). Often I just feel like I’m lacking the necessary resources—mainly time and energy—to nourish my relationship with clothes.

HARLING

It’s tempting to offload the work of discovery to algorithms when you’re short on time, but I think we’re both aware of the pitfalls of that, whether it’s cultural input you’re seeking out or style inspiration. Do you remember that trend online (the irony lol) about introducing more “friction” into your life? I feel like this is relevant here.

HALEY

Oh yes, great point! Friction might actually be the quality that connects the whimsical approach of my youth with the more grown-up approach that we both now endorse. Whereas before the friction may have been more social and physical (getting together with friends, trying things out, blindly sniffing around—which I do genuinely miss and want to bring back somehow?), now it’s more intellectual and philosophical. Meanwhile the frictionless route—compromised best-of roundups, unlimited online return policies, the bottomless ad-filled Instagram feed, people hawking end-all-be-all style solutions—is what actually feels really deadening to me. And while I may resent that the slower route doesn’t always fit in my life, it’s still the approach to aim for.

I guess this leaves us with the question of whether it’s actually realistic to expect your style to really sing and develop if your life can’t accommodate the required friction to make it a worthwhile/grounded/sustainable pursuit. Another failure of the you-can-have-it-all industrial complex? Is it even possible to make fashion feel “easier and more approachable” to people without compromising some of these values? Maybe democratization isn’t the answer! For the record, I don’t think Gumshoe is trying to make it easier for people, I think of it more as a guide for taking on the burden of the harder path. Am I making this sound so depressing? Maybe a more positive spin is that it doesn’t have to be HARD, but you do have to be patient, per the pieces I’ve written about time being the most important quality of good style.

[Ed note: Here I’m referring to three things: This piece on Emma Chamberlain’s home, this essay on taste, and this podcast on influencer style.]

HARLING

Considering adopting “a guide for taking on the burden of the harder path” as my new slogan!!

I too feel aesthetically deadened by the frictionless route you described, which goes down as smoothly as fruit juice but is so completely un-sustaining. I think what friction does is make you pay attention—react, notice, discover what you actually think. An algorithm is frictionless because it does the noticing for you. I think that’s why I love style content that doesn’t focus as much on what to buy but instead on figuring out how to notice what you already respond to. In other words, not necessarily democratizing the answers, but democratizing the questions so you can arrive at the answers yourself. In that sense I agree that having good personal style requires patience more than it requires time or effort, and I think there are different ways into that, i.e. it doesn’t have to involve spending hours scrolling on eBay, it can just be shopping sparingly, living in your clothes, and paying attention to how they make you feel.

HALEY

Yeah this is really well said. I like thinking of patience as the more meaningful input than effort (or money, obviously), because it pushes against what a lot of “modern tools” are trying to solve for, regardless of context. If you think of style as a creative practice then it reasons that the process of exploring your taste is just as important as the outcome of said exploration. The same might be said of how you make art, or communicate with the world, or even “get things done,” to name other pursuits that are being ravaged by convenience culture. Being patient is hard but it’s obviously also a relief to realize we might not have to play as active of a role as we may think we do to develop our tastes. Like you can be passively observant/curious, etc.

This is an uphill battle in today’s fashion environment. I don’t think everyone has the passion to make the pursuit of personal style as alive as you do when the pursuit these days often resembles…scrolling alone in your apartment. Scroll your way to self-knowledge!

HARLING

Yes, not everyone finds the deep-sea scroll as thrilling as I do, lol.

HALEY

No, but I think you’re onto something with the fact that you’re typically doing that on second-hand websites that are full of surprises. If we’re purely talking about consumption, I think the second-hand market (especially offline but online too) is probably the best answer we have to feeling alive these days in the vein of college-era Forever21 mania, may she RIP. The weird things you find, the opportunity to be surprised, the often social nature of how the goods change hands. Maybe I should get into it more. But also consumption might not be the best place to seek out “fun”/aliveness anyway.

It’s funny that I started this convo thinking the problem lay with the modern state of fashion and am ending it realizing that I am also the problem, looking for a sense of looseness and freedom in the act of shopping rather than searching for those qualities in my approach to getting dressed (or…elsewhere in my life). I’m particularly taken by the idea that what might be lacking in my relationship with style right now isn’t effort or time (unsolvable!) but patience. Shout out to my podcast on Wednesday, which is about patience in a completely different arena of my life.

HARLING

I loved that pod btw. And a lot of your desires when it comes to your style are motivated by getting older, so it’s a nice parallel in that sense too. I think it’s interesting to consider patience as a missing ingredient because, to your point, it’s more a state of mind than a resource. It’s a vehicle for friction as well, the opposite of instant gratification. I like that it engenders the kind of approach to style that is circuitous and often unresolved (dare I say loose?) but still quite purposeful.

I’ve also been reflecting on my answer to your question about whether I miss shopping IRL because I was remembering the time when you and I visited Amelia in Pennsylvania years ago before we had kids, and we walked around her town and stumbled into that little consignment store and I ended up impulse-buying those vintage Gucci loafers that ultimately became and still are my favorite pair of shoes I’ve ever owned. (I almost didn’t get them because I’d forgotten my wallet but you insisted I let you buy them on your credit card and venmo you later, lol). My first instinct was to say I don’t miss shopping in person because I love efficiency, but I wonder if I’ve just tricked myself into thinking that because my life doesn’t have as much room for inefficiency anymore. Maybe I need to try and be more open to the occasional detour.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this conversation. Please weigh in!

Last week’s podcast on turning 37; last Friday’s 15 things.

Hope you have a nice Sunday,
Haley