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Department stores were the slick behemoths of their time, replacing tailors and specialty shops. Now we look back at them as homey and personal — and remember the way they enabled a lost American ideal of middle-class consumerism. A similar fate befell the country’s bookstores: Outcry met the giant Barnes & Noble stores in the 1990s, when they were seen as threatening smaller local rivals. But then those same megastores were displaced and undercut by Amazon, and their disappearance hurt for the same reason Lord & Taylor’s does: no more open bathrooms and cafes. No more freedom to browse for hours. No more indifference that felt like welcome.
The pandemic has only underscored this loss. There is no such thing, in 2020, as a place to spend the kind of intimate hours department stores facilitated. We can’t gather spontaneously, certainly not inside, and certainly not for an entire day. Today, I purchase my family’s clothing with a click on my phone in a minute-long break between work, child care and worrying about the news. Only once in half a year have I shopped in person: I bought my kids’ summer sandals by standing on a curb outside our shoe store, telling the proprietor their ages and letting him guess their sizes. I left delighted because it felt so personal and warm compared to almost any other interaction I’d had in weeks.
Of course, the demise of any retail brand is a minuscule dot in 2020’s landscape of horror — and all this nostalgia shouldn’t obscure the fact that online shopping has also enabled more ethical and inclusive fashion, if you know where to look for it.
The internet enables people from all backgrounds, especially Black shoppers, gender nonconforming and trans shoppers and those with different body types, to find clothes that make them feel great without worrying about the judgment or the profiling they might encounter at retail stores. This is no small benefit: It’s a huge step forward.
So yes, the era of department stores has passed. But I wish the best aspects of Lord & Taylor could have persisted into our new world. I would have liked to usher my kids or my niece there someday, maybe for their first suits or shoes for a big party, the kinds of big, in-person events that they may not experience for a long time. We’d start with a bowl of tomato soup and I’d learn about their lives. Then when we were done, we’d sit on a soft couch somewhere in the store, not worrying about germs, arms around each other and a paper bag with that script logo at our feet, resting before we went home.
Sarah M. Seltzer (@sarahmseltzer) is an editor at Lilith Magazine.
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