I went into "The Pink Alligator" the other day, the consignment shop in Hanover, NH, to just have a look. And the owner started chatting with another customer asking her if she was a real estate broker because she was looking for a place to live for her husband, her two little dogs and herself of course. It turned out that the customer was not a real estate broker, but I heard the whole story about how the owner needed to move out of her apartment rental because she could only have one dog.
I often go into shops not to shop but to touch base with people and find out what's going on. When shopping online, that just doesn't happen (or does it? I guess there are shopping blogs, I guess, in a way, this is a shopping blog, where people can share more than just stories about shopping).
Medina: Arabic word for the oldest part of a city, usually where the souks or shops are located. But it is also a place where people exchange information. In Lyon, the area near the Pont de la Guillotière has served as the "medina" for North African immigrants who moved to that part of the city starting in the 1950s. People bring their old stuff and try to sell it. People also talk to people. It's just a gathering place on a square near a bridge. But any shopping district can be a medina. A market is a medina. A place where you can buy stuff but you can also exchange information.
Consignment shops have the particular characteristic, if you are a regular consigner, of placing you in a more intimate relationship with the people who work there because you have to stay there for a while while they go through your old clothes and judge them. Sometimes I will tell the story of a particular item of clothing. My mother's old Hermès silk shirt, for example. Clearly, another example of my father's lack of imagination but great generosity.
Hence the consignment shop isn't just a shop. It's a place where you get to know, not just the people who work there, but also other consigners. At "Revolution" a woman brought bags of clothes as she was shedding her old NYC identity. She had left everything, her job, her guy, her large closets, and it was time to move on. She had beautiful clothes.
In a shop in Lyon a woman walked in with two pairs of shoes she had never worn. After she left, the owner told me that this happens often. Some women shop too much and need help. "Sales resistance." I learned that expression watching an early "I Love Lucy" episode. The one where she can't resist buying a new vacuum cleaner. A new vacuum cleaner? ! In this day and age, not being able to resist buying a new vacuum cleaner is considered, well, boring. Not being able to resist buying yet another pair of shoes that you probably will never wear and don't need is another story.
How did I go from the medina to sales resistance? Ah yes, the intimacy of the relationships you develop in consignment shops. Little by little, we exchange stories, and find out about each other. I wouldn't go as far as saying that we become friends with each other because I cannot imagine taking that relationship outside the shop.
But the shop remains, for me at least, a place to take a break from life and focus on clothes and people. clothes and people. It's nice to know that there are little medinas all over the world.
Needless to say, or maybe there is a need to say, this is not unique to women. There is definitely a "community" that goes to Joe's Equipment not only to buy 2-stroke engine oil, but to share experiences with their equipment or other related stories. Stories are shared between customers as well as between customer and sales personnel. The personal connection grows as the expertise of the sales persons is larger. In that sense the slow demise of the phenomenon of the "local hardware store", like Eserski's in Claremont, can be seen as the demise of the community.
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