Structuring Fashion Department Stores As Situating Spatial Practice Daniel Koch

S D TRUCTURING Far from passive containers or neutral fields where particular objects are to be desired, bought, ANIEL KOCH and sold, department stores constitute spaces formative for both shopping behaviour and culture. In the constantly changing environment, in an interplay between retail strategies and responses to customer behaviour, a negotiation is going on of what and who is of importance, who is to be given exposure, and what needs to be hidden. As such, department stores form intricate examples of how shopping spaces are sites of negotiation of public culture, and of F A reproducing or creating norms and ideas in society. S HION Inspired by the work of Baudrillard and Butler, Wigley, and Williamson, this book investigates how department stores work as situating structures, in which we not only find what we want, but what we should want, who we are, how our society is arranged, and our role in it—an investigation that challenges our understanding of architecture and planning as well as of society in general. Daniel Koch is a researcher and teacher at the School of Architecture, Royal institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. Structuring Fashion is his doctoral dissertation that devel- ops and improves the theories of his former work on spatial systems as producers of meaning, refocusing the main inquiry onto department stores. ISBN 978-91-975901-8-1 9 789197 590181 WWW.LUNAPARK.SE WWW.LUNDLUND.COM STRUCTURING FASHION WWW.DAMPSTUDIOS.SE DEPARTMENT STORES AS SITUATING SPATIAL PRACTICE <axl> DANIEL KOCH WWW.ADAMSKY.SE WWW.PETERGEHRKE.COM Structuring Fashion Department Stores as Situating Spatial Practice CONTENTS Author: Daniel Koch Title: Structuring Fashion: Department Stores as Situating Spatial Practice Preface v Akademisk avhandling 2007 PhD Dissertation 2007 TRITA-ARK-Akademisk avhandling 2007:2 Part I: Setting the Stage 1 ISSN 1402-7461 1. Introduction 3 ISRN KTH/ARK/AA-07:02-SE 2. Consumption, Identity, and Shopping 16 ISBN KTH 978-91-7178-578-7 3. On Space 43 KTH Architecture and the Built Environment 4. Material and Methods 59 School of Architecture Royal Institute of Technology Part II: A System of Objects 97 SE-100 44 Stockholm Sweden 5. An Order of Things 99 6. Spatialising Categories 115 Copyright © 2007 Daniel Koch 7. Training the Aesthetics 161 Published by Axl Books, Stockholm: 2007 8. The Complexity of Classes 216 www.axlbooks.com info@ axlbooks.com Part III: A System in Action 239 ISBN 978-91-975901-8-1 9. A Practice of Situation 241 10. Some Things We Do Together, Some We Don’t 265 Illustrations appearing on the inner sleeve: 11. A Stage for Others to See 294 Colourplate I, III, and IV: Fashion Photography. Giving different importance to showing the 12. The Public Femininity and the Discerned Mind 323 clothing itself, fashion photography (and magazines) express different disposition to fashion, which is a strong way in which they position themselves relative to one another. Compare to Figures 4:IX, 12:IV, and 13:I (Photography: [I – Front Sleeve] Mattias Ohlsson for Swedish Cos- Part IV: A Structuring Process 361 mopolitan; [II – Back Sleeve] Andreas Kock for Plaza; [III – Back Sleeve, Inside] Peter Gehrke 13. Of Structure, Individual, and Structuring Processes 363 for Litkes). Colourplate II: (also refered to as Figure 6:IX) Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Diana Bath- 14. Shopping Culture: Identity and Social Positioning 380 ing with her Nymphs, with Stories of Acteon and Calisto: The people in the painting are given 15. The Department Store: A Structuring of Situations 398 clear contoures or, in Wölfflin’s terms, linear borders. Compare to Figure 6:X, showing painterly borders (Courtesy of Museum Wasserburg-Anholt). 16. Architecture: Situating Spatial Structures 421 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or Appendix 449 by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Bibliography 451 List of Illustrations 464 Printed in Latvia Acknowledgements 467 PREFACE It is still early in the evening; my feet are taking me strolling along Drottninggatan. While early in the autumn—the first leaf falling from the trees demanded attention just yesterday by landing soundly on the asphalt next to the outdoor table we were sitting at—it has started to grow dark, and the still open stores along the streets have begun to stand out with their warm light illuminating the streets and shop-windows. Slowly making my way along the street, I pass by two department stores on my way to the meeting-point, which is decided to be “Åhlens”. Everyone knows where that means—it is just outside the main entrance, where the escalators come up from the subway. With a few minutes to spare, I quickly pass into the department store, not really to buy anything but to have a look at what is available—the new fall fashion has, after all, just arrived. Three escalator rides later, my eyes and hands browse through depart- ments filled with new clothing, gathering the impressions of the new, trying to compare to what I already own. The warmth of the department store feels good, and my skin tingles and stings a bit as the coldness gives way to a more healthy warmth. A button or two gets unbuttoned on my coat to adjust. Gloves come off and are put in the bag (this coat I won’t ruin by stuffing the pockets all the time). The department store has grown much more open, I notice. There are fewer blocking walls here—and there is a dramatic change to the ground floor. Never the less, I remain for a while, getting caught up in fabrics, sweaters, shirts and—actually —shoes. Even more than earlier, they have gathered men’s fashion and accessories on one floor, which means that, as long as I don’t move up or down, I can drift around as whims take me without ending up “wrong”. Making my way down—past the home floor (and a brief look at coffee cups), women’s fashion and cosmetics—I finally reach the office supplies, which are now gathered with books, CDs, and DVDs into a kind of multimedia floor. Having bought a notebook I hurry outside and take the escalators up to the meeting point. How much time did I spend? I hurriedly take forth my cellular phone to have a look. Late. *** Debenhams, George’s Coffee, second floor. Sunday morning. The coffeeshop is still fair- ly empty, but the smell of warm caffe latte and cake is lingering in the air around the few people sitting here, having made their way past the cosmetics and jewels of the entrance floor, up the escalators and then past the shirts, suits, and ties on the route to the brief pause in shopping. The dark haired, in a leisure suit and wearing no tie, is having an espresso only. The other, opting for tie but not suit, is having a latte and a muffin, not having had breakfast yet. On his way here, he passed through the lingerie section directly inside the secondary entrance, making his way through women’s fashion before passing the jewels and a fragment of the cosmetics before reaching the escalator—as he based on findings of the coming work, and, in part, on common ideas of how shopping is had been in the central train station to book a train ticket for the coming weekend and performed and by whom—at least common in popular thought, magazines, and daily thus came another way when his friend had called. There were some really nice shirts press. They also present different spaces and situations that can be found within the for sale here, his friend had said, and he should come see them. Perhaps they could have department stores, and attempt to capture different possible narratives that could take a coffee, then, since he was so close by? George’s coffee is, after all, just by the shirts. place within them. As such, they will in part be questioned in the coming discussions, One of them ends up buying a pair of pants as well. The other, on the way out, finds a but they should also be seen as a means to begin this work by focusing right there, on the nice set of espresso cups that he definitely needs—since he is going to buy an espresso objects, the spaces, the habits, and the situations that are to be analysed. machine soon—and a glass cup for small candles—which is for his fiancé who likes the With this said, the work to come, the result of around four years of research, has cozy atmosphere they create (or that is how he tells it to his friend). Overall, they are left sprung from a deep-rooted interest in architecture and its role in society as a situating to shop mostly alone, the most people they meet being employees, or the decent amount practice. Throughout the research process, the key questions from my point of view of people having already gathered in George’s Coffee—which none of them, curiously have been relations between spatial organisation, social structures, and cultural norms enough, can notice mean anyone is actually leaving or heading to the waiting rest of and ideas—that is, it is as an examination of how space organises a range of situations the chairs and tables unoccupied. and values. This is not done by space alone, nor in a direct manner, but as a negotiation *** between space, people, and things, constituting a kind of material form of communica- Åhlens, Saturday afternoon.

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