Field Study - The Mall
December 20th, 2007Christmas is almost here, and in that spirit I’m here to talk to you about one of Christmas’ biggest rituals - shopping. Though Black Friday is sometimes the biggest shopping day of the year, as often as not it’s the Saturday before Christmas instead (by both sales and customer traffic). I don’t know which one will be bigger this year and I’m not going to guess; I prefer to avoid the huge crowds, personally. Women don’t seem to share my aversion, though. I brought up the huge shopping days to several women I know, and they seemed excited by all the glitz, crowds, and big sales. Personally, I usually do most of my shopping online, which is much more to my taste.
I determined that this year would be different, however. I wanted to see a little bit of the Christmas hype for myself. Ostensibly, this was to test a new theory of mine: the only colors in fashion that matter are red, white, and black. (If we remade our national flag again, would it look like this instead?) I chanced upon this theory attending beauty product shows for work. Everywhere you look at one of those shows, all you would see is those three colors.
You see a lot of other stuff, too, of course. Like scissors that cost 200-300 bucks or more, inlaid with gold and silver. You also see more skin than you would at a strip club. They have ads at those shows that could make grown men blush. They even feature mini-bars every few hundred feet! Beauty shows are downright decadent, I tell you. That point was reinforced by the women that would come back 3 and 4 times to buy stuff (dragging their overloaded bags on the ground with them), and on the last trip their credit cards would often be declined. Then they’d get embarrassed and call up their significant others, pleading for more money. If men typically love fast cars and sports, women seem to love beauty products.
And they often love those products in red, white, and black. Take my sister, for example. She has a red leather laptop bag, red jackets, red high heels, even a cherry red sports car. She claims it’s “her color”. Her and hundreds of millions of other women, she means.
If you’ve read my blog before, however, you know I am not content with mere anecdotes. So I decided to test my theory. Over the last three days during the height of the holiday season, I walked around three different malls to gather data. At first I had grand ideas about all the different information I’d gather about the storefronts and such. When I actually got to a mall, however, those ideas quickly faded. Having only my own memory to go by, I decided to collect the most bare-bones data possible so that I could keep track of it mentally for long stretches.
All I did was count the numbers of mannequins in front window displays that were wearing only red, white, and black, and then also the ones that had on any other color. That is, if the clothes contained any other colors whatsoever, they were counted separate from those that had red, white, and black only. It’s a strict criterion, but I figured my theory was fairly solid, so I didn’t mind. I only counted mannequins because they were fairly clear and separate from one another, and they seemed to project the image of the entire store without me having to check out the whole place. (Which saved me plenty of awkward moments in women’s clothing stores.)
Thus, I’d walk down one side of the mall counting diligently in my head, and when I got to the end, I put the results into the notepad of my cell phone. I know that’s not quite as crazy as infiltrating a crack gang to get data, but it’s the most involved thing I’ve done so far to get data for this blog.
Anyway, my method was simple enough. But as usual things didn’t go quite as smoothly as I planned. I had to iron out the process as I went along, and since I was concentrating so heavily on counting, I got lost at the first mall. I couldn’t even figure out what I had counted and what I hadn’t, so I had to stop. It got bad enough that I had to walk outside in the brisk weather for 20 minutes to find my car. And when I hit big fashion sections of the malls, I had to invent excuses to stop and count. (Especially awkward at women’s clothing stores.)
And of course the counting itself was not easy. I had to make a lot of judgment calls about colors like red-orange, mauve, dark pink, gray, and cream. Sometimes one little thing like gold stars or belts would throw the whole count off. Usually I just went with the spirit of the outfit rather than be a color nazi about it, though. I didn’t have much time to count anyway, and since I might not be able to distinguish colors as well as women, I figured I shouldn’t nitpick.
As I mentioned, I got data from three malls. One was average, one was upscale, and one was really upscale. (Those are highly technical terms, I know.) Here is the data on each of them, respectively:
(These numbers are probably a little too specific. Keep in mind counting these displays is an inexact science, as I said before.)
On average, 30 percent of store mannequins had exclusively red, white, and/or black. The other 70 percent included other colors. However, those displays were not evenly distributed. Very often, stores would have displays that were only in red, white, and/or black, or they had none that used only those colors. The stores that mostly used those three colors were lingerie stores, like Frederick’s of Hollywood and Victoria’s Secret. (Big surprise there, I know.) But, oddly enough, there was another type of store that often featured those same colors: maternity stores. (Guess pregnant women feel a special need to feel sexy.)
The stores that included other colors most were usually family friendly: discount anchor stores and kids stores, mostly. They often had a wide variety of warmer colors instead, like light greens, blues, pinks, and such.
So, is 30 percent a lot? Considering the wide variety of stores and displays I looked at, I would think so. I hardly saw any color consistently used as much as those three. Every once in awhile, I saw a store that was trying to make bright purple the new red (or neon/lime green), but those were mostly gimmicks. (Are they trying to bring the ’80s back again? *shudder*) Confirmation bias notwithstanding, black, white, and red are king and my theory seems sound. (At least where I live.)
But even that analysis comes in shades of gray. I also noticed another tendency in the data: The more upscale the mall, the more colors you would see (and they’d be more subtle). The most upscale mall I went to only had 24% of mannequins in just those colors. I guess the more you pay for clothes, the deeper and richer canvas of colors you end up seeing. Again, no surprises there.
Keep in mind this mostly applies only to women’s fashion, too. As you might guess, women’s clothing stores vastly outnumber men’s. Men’s clothing stores were often more reserved too, with very restrained colors and few, if any, mannequins in the front displays. And you won’t catch a lot of guys wearing red (though many love black, like Simon Cowell).
One other thing you might wonder is if Christmas affected my analysis, color-wise. I can tell you from experience that it didn’t. Interestingly, there were almost no Christmas or red/green motifs in any of the store fronts. It seems fashion doesn’t care much about Christmas. (Unless you’re like my mom and love Christmas sweaters, that is.)
As a side note, another thing I expected was bigger crowds. I’ve heard people shop a lot the week before Christmas, but honestly there was many more people on Saturday than in the last 3 days. I bet this Saturday is going to be a nightmare, though.
Nevertheless, I got to see what all the holiday shopping hype was about. I even had a “mall moment” during one of my strolls. I saw a Shyguy shirt at Hot Topic and thought “this would be perfect for my brother” (my editor). (Ed. Note: Thanks Dave! It was very thoughtful of you.) In case it wasn’t abundantly clear by now, I am not prone to impulse buys or shopping at Hot Topic. But do you know what color that shirt was? You guessed it: red, white, and black.
| | | del.icio.us |
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Hope your sister doesn’t read the part where you say that she’s a typical woman for choosing red.