We now have a tentative plan as to when we can expect things to go back to normal, customers can expect a very different experience. Do your research online first, buy before you try – and avoid jeans.

Picture the scene: you walk into your favourite clothes store for the first time in three months, check your mask is covering your nose and mouth, and pump sanitiser into your hands.

 

And then you spot it – the perfect gingham dress. Just the mood-boosting, picnic-appropriate fillip your wardrobe needs, and it is just there, on the other side of the shop floor. But, instead of making a beeline for it, you have to take the long way round, following the one-way system marked out in arrow stickers on the floor, pausing when the shopper in front of you does in order to observe the two-metre-ruleAnd then – disaster – the masked shopper in front of you reaches for your gingham dress and takes the last one in your size. Which means that, if she doesn’t buy it, it will be headed for quarantine in the stock room, rather than back to the shop floor.

But reports from post-lockdown all over the world suggest that there is likely to be an appetite for a post-quarantine clothes splurge. A Hermès boutique in Guangzhou took the equivalent of £2.1m on its first Saturday after reopening, setting a record for a single day in a single boutique in China’s retail history. Wherever Zara stores have opened their doors from Paris to Tunis, shoppers have formed long first-day queues.

With warehouses of unsold summer stock to shift, retailers are at pains to do everything they can to make customers feel safe. Some of the basics will be universal. In-store numbers will be strictly limited, so expect queues outside. Stores with more than one door may operate separate entrances and exits to avoid face-to-face contact at these points. Masks will be worn by staff, and shoppers will be encouraged to follow suit. Contactless payment will be encouraged and sanitiser pumps stationed by each cash desk. Only household members can shop together, and lift occupancy will be limited to one person or those from one household.

Jewellery and watches will be particularly challenging to try on, as the virus can live on metal for much longer than on fabric.

But there are already signs that a new genre of IRL shopping trip could begin to emerge. The lost art of window shopping, for instance, is enjoying a renaissance.

During the pandemic, Mixology, a teenage fashion store on the Upper East Side of New York, resisted boarding up its windows and instead installed new outfits in the windows with a sign reading: “See something you like in the window? Feel free to text or call,” with the shopkeepers’ phone numbers listed.

Where fashion stores have reopened in other city centres, retailers have repurposed their windows from abstract, artsy cubes to showcases for key looks available in store, encouraging shoppers to do their initial browse of the selection in the open air and without touching any stock.

The age of the aimless browse is over for now. And the etiquette of flicking through rails seems doubtful. So do an online recce and save screenshots to your phone of pieces you like. That way you can ask staff where they are, and reduce your wandering-about time.

Alternatively, this could be the time to pivot to online clothes shopping. The best place to start is with a brand you already wear, so that you have a good sense of what size you take and a realistic expectation of what the fabric and finish will be, these being tricky to assess online.

To recreate shopping with friends, consider setting up a WhatsApp group for honest advice so that each of you can try on new purchases in front of the mirror and send selfies for feedback.

Things will get better. Swifter sanitising systems, some using ozone-based technology and others ultraviolet light, are being worked on, with a view to reducing the quarantine time for clothes that customers have been handled to an hour or less.

The new normal is a strange place. Anyone for retail therapy?

Source : The Guardian

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