“When you have a life-changing event like COVID, there’s fear, no control, uncertainty,” Rattle says. “All of these emotions are so extreme that you need to be able to cope somehow. So [for] people who sort of enjoyed shopping before as a happy thing, now it was their escape mechanism.”
For Kate,* a 30-year-old working in the fashion industry in Philadelphia, her shopping habits started in her senior year of high school with her first job. They didn’t stop there, not even after pandemic.
“My salary has increased since [high school], but I think the total percent of my disposable income spent on clothing has remained about the same, which is dark,” she said. “I make excuses for myself now that the clothes are better produced in small batches or I’m buying on Poshmark, but the impulse is still the same.”
She purchases on average about two items a week, by her estimate, which she admits “doesn’t sound bad.” But a glance around her apartment reveals folded piles of clothes on the floor and in the closet. She jokingly calls herself a “hoarder.”
Part of the motivation for women like Kate is rooted in adrenaline—it’s the thrill of the hunt, finding something unexpected, and the thrill of possession, owning something interesting and spotted only by you. Kate has a creative side to it, a desire for re-creating designer or expensive items with thrifted items and discounted treasures from off-price stores.
And on the days when she finds something so perfect—the right size, the right style, the right brand—it does feel meant to be. Kate recently found sling-back Cole Haan kitten heels at $4.99 on a shopping trip.
“They were just my size, they’re within my budget—what are the odds? I can’t walk away now,” she said. “On the few occasions that I do walk away, 75% of the time it is the right decision, but there is that nagging 25% where you go back and it’ll never be there again. I just have to take this as a sign from the universe that we were destined to be together.”
Kate sets herself a challenge every now and again to cut back on buying for a week. Inevitably, something comes up—a tough week, boredom, or a looming occasion.
Elle, a 23-year old woman living in Los Angeles who works in the tech sector, began buying herself gifts during the pandemic. She was excited to receive a package or chat with salespeople after stores opened. She felt a sense of belonging when she bought clothes.
“When I go shopping, it makes me feel powerful and important,” she said. “It makes me feel like I’m put together and spending money on this thing that I want. It makes me feel like I’m gifting myself with something and I’ve ‘made it.’”
She’s now able to take a step back and correlate her purchases to times of anxiety and a lack of self-esteem. Now that she makes more money, she says she’s actually spending less.
She also knows how quickly the itch can spread from one purchase to a multitude. She bought so many things that she kept the packages from her roommates at the beginning of the pandemic.
It was her inability to control the situation that left her feeling helpless. She was unable to find the right item in a store, so she ended up buying more. It was hard to stick to a budget.
Rattle feels we’re in a specific moment when it comes to overshopping. She calls it a “perfect storm” of three factors: big retail companies mastering psychology, like sending repeat emails the second an item gets added to an online shopping cart; social media feeds us constant ideas of who we should be and who we’re not; and a largely cashless society removes us from the money actually available in our bank accounts.
“We’re all vulnerable. You’re hungry, you’re tired, you’re dejected, you shop,” Rattle said. “Compulsivity comes when it just becomes tough so often that it becomes a behavior.”
Source: Glamour