You’ve been chasing that grail, doing research, finding a deal or that one obscure shop. You finally bought it and received it, and it feels… Ok. Now what?
A few weeks ago a friend mused on the thrill of desiring an object and the inevitable disappointment of actually getting it. “The biggest satisfaction is certainly prior to actually having the item,” he said. “Once you have it, so often you realize that you did not need it, that it is not as great as you think it would be.” I can relate, and probably so can you.
Shopping is complicated, especially for clothes, because they form a part of our identity more than other things by virtue of being close to the body and highly visible to others. The reasons we buy are multiple – most people do because they want to signal their status, monetary or cultural. We shop because we feel bad about ourselves, we shop because we feel good about ourselves. We shop because the social media told us to, or because we want to share our purchases on social media. But one thing is inevitable, the joy of the hunt often trumps the purchase itself. “The thrill of the chase (in love and in the acquisition of a grail) almost always trumps the reality of finally owning it,” says the menswear influencer Nick Wooster. “It wasn’t always that way…but it sure seems to be a sign of the times.”
The reasons for why shopping often feels disappointing are also multiple. They range from our psychological wiring to the simulated, image-centric universe we now live in, which often leads to an all too real shopping experience that feels subpar. But why? French theory may be an unlikely source for explaining shopping behaviour, but bear with me. One explanation comes from the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan, who spent a lot of time examining the nature of desire. The first reason will likely sound familiar; Lacan posited that because there is a fundamental lack in us, we look for objects – whether a lover or a physical item (the parenthetic comparison of love and shopping in Mr. Wooster’s quote above are not accidental), to complete us, to somehow make us better – cooler, more beautiful, etc. Because in reality objects lack this power, they tend to disappoint. But our solution is not to abandon the chase, but to move on to the next object in the hope that it will do the job the one we just got could not. Do this enough and a subtle shift happens; we begin to invest the pursuit of the object itself with libidinal power. The endorphin rush you feel from hitting the add to cart button after a search comes from this. “Capitalism works because it doesn’t,” says Dr Peter Rollins, a philosopher and a noted Lacanian expert, “it makes a promise and then fails to deliver on it, and it’s that failure that keeps us hooked. If it could actually give us what we think we want it would lose its power.”
Another, more subtle, Lacanian revelation is that our desire is not for things, but for the other’s desire. According to Lacan we form this behavior as babies, when we rush to mimic our mother – a baby smiles back at his mother, because she wants him to. We grow up with this “mirroring,” which is how marketing works, especially the influencer kind. This desire for desire is what’s truly satisfying to us, and the barriers that we encounter on the way serve not as obstacles that frustrate us but that increase our pleasure through anticipation (to give a more Lacanian example, lingerie is sexy not because it is a conduit to sex, but because it’s a temporary barrier). This is why the research, the hunt for that piece we covet feels good.
What fuels the desire further is that it comes from a world that, according to another French thinker, Guy Debord, is no longer tangible, but is presented as a continuous series of spectacles. Our purchasing decisions are largely based on images. The spectacle tells us what to buy, where to buy it, and how to feel about what we buy. What’s more, the spectacle also dictates what is produced and how it is marketed. In the spectacle-driven world, two-dimensionality reigns and the physicality of the object becomes secondary. No wonder, then, that our purchases often feel disappointing in real life. But this disappointment does not matter, because the spectacle is a tautology. “The spectacle presents itself as something enormously positive, indisputable and inaccessible. It says nothing more than ‘that which appears is good, and that which is good appears,’” writes Debord. Finally, according to Debord, the spectacle is ever changing and therefore inescapable, a perpetuum mobile generator of desire. There is always another drop, another collab, another limited edition colorway touted by your favorite influencer. The answer to a disappointing purchase you were influenced into is being influenced into another, and just as likely disappointing, purchase.
It doesn’t help that these days the experience of shopping itself often feels like a letdown. The act of buying clothes online is often a lottery – you don’t truly know the fit and finish of the garment unless you’ve already seen it and tried it on in real life. Judging by the amount of online returns, which in some instances exceed 50%, people also use e-commerce to satisfy their Lacanian impulses. And the culmination of an online purchase – getting a box in the mail – just doesn’t deliver.
Sadly, the same often goes for physical shopping. Waiting in lines to cookie-cutter stores, perusing what increasingly feels like merchified, interchangeable stuff, dealing with the faux politeness of salespeople who just want to close the sale – none of it feels particularly alluring.
There are exceptions to the rule. Some purchases do feel great, and some shopping experiences are memorable. Wearing a grail can be just as satisfying as hunting for it. A specialty store, where the merchandise is carefully selected with a clear point of view, and where salespeople are enthusiasts themselves who will chew your ear off about what they sell can be great. Associating a purchase with another experience enhances the purchase itself; this is why people shop like mad when they vacation.
Still, the basic premise holds true, the pursuit often feels better than the purchase itself. Lacan’s solution was not to try to get rid of the desire for desire, which is impossible, but to embrace it on its own terms, while occasionally satisfying it. “If fashion can give us the right amount of not having, it hooks us. And the critique here is not that that’s wrong or bad, it’s just that we don’t see this mechanism,” says Dr. Rollins. So, the next time you are ready to pull the trigger on something you imagine you must have, think twice. Perhaps window shopping will bring you close enough to what you actually want.
