When the magic left shopping

Photo: Fairfax archive

The days of dressing up to go shopping in town are long gone.

Photo: Martin Hunter

Shopping today.

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As you push your way through malls that smell of takeaway food, tripping over small children, inhaling the whiff of scantily-clad strangers' sweat; as you trip on somebody's loose jandal and you feel the panic rise in the after-Christmas sales, it may help to know that there was once – a long time ago – another way.

It was leisurely. It was an event. You dressed up for it. Your mother wore her corset, un-laddered nylon stockings, a freshly-ironed dress she described as "smart", a hat and gloves. You had your face washed, took a clean hanky in your pocket and you caught the bus to wonderland.

The shop fittings of that era turn up now and then: there's a big glove cabinet with glass-fronted drawers in a second-hand shop in Napier and another old glass display counter, chucked out of Ballantyne's in Christchurch, still doing service in Lyttleton. You didn't rummage for what you wanted back then; it was held in cabinets like these and you were shown it by a shop assistant snappily dressed in black.

Your mother sat on a high wooden chair with an embossed seat patterned like a super wine biscuit, her handbag on the counter. Items were brought to her from the cabinets for inspection until, interminably later, she found just what she was looking for. And here's a term you don't hear any more: it had to be "the best quality". That's why the stuff is still doing the rounds of the junk shops decades later, while what you bought yesterday is unravelling, its buttons are loose, and it may just see the week out.

Nobody shopped in shorts, singlets, jandals, bikinis or bare feet; not unless they were just calling in at the local dairy. You might not be buying much, but you looked your best to go shopping. And after you shopped – your parcels might even be delivered to your home as part of the service – you bought afternoon tea, or sat yourself down in a milkbar for a well-deserved icecream sundae. You didn't slop the contents of a cold can down somebody's neck on the escalator, or wipe your icecream on my skirt, and blessedly, no shop assistant ever asked, "How's your day been so far?"

Male shop assistants wrapped your parcels in brown paper off a big roll and tied them with string, with a loop handle to make them easier to carry. They did it with a flourish, snapping the string – which hung from an overhead metal gadget – as if it was just sewing cotton. What women assistants did I don't remember.

I always head for the major department stories in overseas cities; they're the closest I get to the childhood feeling that the world is full of magical things to buy, all yet to be discovered. The fact is, like many people I know, I shop on the internet now as much as I do in real shops, and only antique and second-hand shops still give me the feeling that I'll ever find something special. Is this why retailers comment so nervously about dwindling sales and slow seasons?

The magic went out of shopping, the way I see it, when we began to drive small shopkeepers out of business, the ones who might have had something different on offer, or who were trying out something new; the ones who weren't franchise owners or parts of big chains. They went first in redevelopment projects, when their premises were demolished, and now they go because rents are driven up so hard and high that none can take risks, or plan on the future. That may be market forces at work, but it makes for dull shopping – and now, in the background, there's always Trade Me or the internet to fall back on as an alternative. Increasingly I also hear people saying they do their serious shopping overseas.

You wouldn't believe it now, but Wellington's Lambton Quay was once a sweeping vista of Victorian facades, the kind that would now delight tourists. Stewart Dawson's the jewellers were the last to rip their old fittings out, quaint old black woodwork and glass, and I doubt it did them any good. Now Lambton Quay looks like just anywhere.

Wellington's key department store, Kirkcaldie and Stains, survives there – just. It's the last department store in town to have real window displays that tell complex stories – Santa and his elves, Easter rabbits, race days – and the last to pin its act on quality. Kirks was listed on the stock exchange in 2001. Still a bastion of conservative taste, it struggles a bit, but if it were to fail, it would be a gloomy sign for retail in Wellington.

I expect its battles are common everywhere where traditional retail has to stand up against shopping malls enticing shoppers out of the city into covered, free car parks in outlying suburbs, where they offer a standard range of stores selling standard goods.

In November, the city council's support for a $100 million plus development of the Johnsonville Shopping Centre drew a warning from Kirks' managing director, John Milford, that it would rip the heart out of the city's Golden Mile. A previous report said more than $44 million of consumer spending would shift there in the mall's first year. Milford said similar projects in Auckland, Hamilton and Christchurch had had a huge effect on those cities' CBD areas, and revealed that Kirks had rejected an approach to move to the shopping centre: "Kirks has been in the same location for 145 years and this is where our heritage is. We're not going anywhere."

Now Kirks has a new fight on its hands. Businessman and city property owner Sir Robert Jones plans to run a team in the next local body elections that aims to close off Wellington's main shopping streets – the Golden Mile, and through to Courtenay Place – turning them into pedestrian malls with free trams running through them, and with bicycles provided. He envisages cafes spilling out on to windy pavements, and stallholders moving in.

"I've been to about 50 countries in the world and the one particular characteristic of all vibrant and appealing cities is pedestrian malls," Sir Robert says. Mayor Kerry Prendergast points out that the cities he talks about have also been around for centuries.

Milford says closing car access off to Lambton Quay would cause problems in side streets, and would have ramifications for retailers. "Shoppers want to drive close to their destinations, and if they could not, they would go to Porirua or Lower Hutt, where the car parks are under cover, and free. I would have great difficulty with anything stopping my customers getting to me." Milford should know what wouldn't work for his store, and possibly for retail in general.

I wonder where Kirks' customers would go if the store ever did close down. I suspect they'd get panicky, as I did last time I went into Ballantynes, Christchurch's version of the same shopping thing, a few weeks ago. A slight change in a department store experience – the road being dug up outside, the mall alongside looking empty and depressed, cosmetics on sale where I always headed for hosiery – and the spell is broken.

Two years ago there was an outcry when Ballantynes decided to shut down its haberdashery department as a sign of the times: Kirks' had already shrunk to almost nothing. I lamented that decision, on the grounds that shopping for small items such as buttons, zips, braids and embroidery scissors is a vital part of the big store experience, making a prestigious store accessible to shoppers of modest means. The doorman at Kirks, in his top hat, opens the main door for everyone; he doesn't pick and choose.

I guess it's obvious where I stand. I like big department stores that promise quality and diversity under one roof, and prefer them to huge malls offering what a dull main street used to: Aussie chains, yet more Aussie chains, and the same stuff in Wanganui as you'll find in Hastings or Gore. Alongside the bargain barns, there must be shops where prestige hovers nervously over the goods, conferring the blessing of safe good taste on the buyer.

Here's an impossible dream: that the Johnsonville mall will suck so much business out of the city centre that it will drive city rents down. Then the adventurous and quirky retailers of the Cuba precinct might be able to move downtown and liven it up with a bit of bad taste, some vibrant tack, and much-needed edge. There are times right now when you could fire a gun down the Golden Mile in daytime and barely startle the pigeons.

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