Branding the man: why men are the next frontier in fashion retail

In the not-so-old days, the expedition to find the perfect Christmas tree involved getting into a station wagon with ropes and blankets and a very sharp ax.

In A Christmas Memory, Truman Capote writes of his boyhood memory of picking a tree that is “a brave handsome brute that survives thirty hatchet strokes before it keels with a creaking rending cry…Lugging it like a kill…”

Despite our nostalgia for Christmas past, the truth is, Live Christmas trees are perhaps one of the most wasteful aspects of the holiday — not including the exchange of gifts nobody wants or needs.

In 2008 U.S. consumers bought 28.2 million Christmas trees — a ten-percent decline from the previous year. 2009 looked to be a full 35-percent up, and from the number that showed up on curbs around my neighborhood, it certainly looked like the spirit of Christmas came alive for many. Perhaps it was just their way of saying goodbye to a truly awful year.

And so in these early days of 2010, I snapped some pictures of trees once loved, now chucked unceremoniously to the sidewalk. Some appear to be waiting for a bus. Others are shrouded in embarassment. Some lean against one another for support while others have been horribly mutilated – one burned, another clipped of its branches that were then neatly stuffed into knotted bags. Others were allowed to keep their tinsel or lights. A festive farewell.

These are the ghosts of a Christmas past.

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It’s part of our DNA to shop — or at least that’s what we’ve always been told. There was nothing more lustful than American consumerism, the wanton disregard for tomorrow when the urge (and ease) allowed them to have what they want today.

But that seems to have changed.

A recent New York Times/CBS News poll reveals that almost half of the Americans surveyed said they were spending less time buying “nonessentials” and more than half were spending less money in stores and online.

Not exactly music to the ears of economists. But it certainly begs the question: why have we been so hopelessly dependent on a consumer economy for so long?

Not since the Great Depression have we seen Americans returning to “the simple life” — or life where shopping and mass consumption is not such a singular focus.

Perhaps that’s why art supply stores, libraries, and even museums are showing better than usual foot traffic. According to the New York Times, attendance at many museums and cultural events dropped from 2002 to 2008, but in 2009 showed a measurable increase (although they don’t tell us by what percent.)

Meanwhile, movie attendance increased 5-percent — not enough to make up for the dramatic losses over the past ten years but it has to mean something, especially if you’re a studio that isn’t producing movies like Avatar.

Hobbies, sports, and simple home improvements have become the new way of spending leisure time, and it’s made an impact on the idea of family togetherness. Rather than going and maxxing out daddy’s credit card, families are re-discovering the simple life.  In a January 3 Times article, “In Recession, Americans Doing More, Buying Less,” Barbara Koricanek, a retired nurse said she realized “we don’t need half of what we got,” and began getting rid of excess clothes in her closet and even baking her own bread. Another family bought a used canoe on Craigslist and took to weekends paddling the waters of the Florida coast.

The Queen of DIY perfection, Martha Stewart, has rebranded her daily television show as “Hands On Television.” In the past few months, she has increased the number of segments on home crafts, recycling everyday materials into a variety of useful objects. It’s hard to believe that in this day and age, anyone would watch an entire segment about the many uses of Mason jars.

While Americans may not be shopping for yet another pair of jeans or designer shoes, they are looking for ways to interact in a meaningful way, and the neighborhood craft center or organized activity clubs may just be the next consumer market.

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