Marker

Marker was a publication from Medium about the intersection of business, economics, and culture. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Member-only story

Why People Buy Luxurious Things in the Middle of a Financial Crisis

5 min readMay 7, 2020

--

Photo: shyrokova/Getty Images

About a month ago, as the stark reality of the pandemic lockdown set in, I hit a personal low point — worried and pessimistic about the economy in general, about the financial future of my city and of my household.

Then I went online and bought something I didn’t need.

Specifically, a swimsuit — from Patagonia no less — even though I already have perfectly fine swimwear and, more to the point, the public pools where I live are closed for the foreseeable future. But swimming is one of my prized routines that the lockdown shattered. So my needless purchase was a kind of billable wish for a better, or at least more normal, future. It was, in short, a form of shopping optimism. And as it turns out, I’m definitely not the only person to engage in such superfluous spending — even in the midst of a financial catastrophe.

The term “shoptimism,” in fact, was evidently coined during the last economic meltdown. Former Land’s End creative director and Esquire editor Lee Eisenberg’s book on the subject, Shoptimism: Why the American Consumer Will Keep on Buying No Matter What, was published in late 2009 when the Great Recession reigned. Eisenberg posited two kinds of…

--

--

Marker
Marker

Published in Marker

Marker was a publication from Medium about the intersection of business, economics, and culture. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Rob Walker
Rob Walker

Written by Rob Walker

Author The Art of Noticing. Related newsletter at https://robwalker.substack.com

Responses (14)