RETAIL: AN INTRODUCTION
Picture, if you still can, the packed dressing room of a Loehmann’s, in the days before that deep-discount clothing emporium, its stores for decades a New York shopping icon, shuttered its doors. The lighting is grey, fluorescent, unflattering. But never mind, it signifies the business at hand: the sacred and profane ritual of communal shopping.
Hooks and clothing racks line the dressing-room walls, but the focal point of the space is a wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling mirror, reflecting dozens of pirouetting, preening bodies. Women. Women of all shapes, colors, sizes and ages, cellulite visible, in various states of undress: pulling their legs through pants, shimmying the fabric of dresses down over their hips. They are talking to each other (even to strangers) as they don their apparel: “Mom, that looks great on you!” “Too roomy, honey.” “Does it come in another color?”