Do I Look Stupid in Your Clothes?

Online menswear retailers have great intentions. And that’s the problem.

I’m getting a concierge. It’s a lovely idea. I had no idea I needed one. However, a slew of new menswear sites (and womenswear and petswear and plantswear) have thought it best that I get one since as a male, I evidently “hate shopping.”

Trunk Club has based its model on this. In short, a personal assistant is assigned and at best, s/he tries to discern your style through… I’m not sure how they do that but they’re very nice and have good taste.

Update: I posted a really bitchy comment on Facebook about my experiences with Trunk Club. The next morning, the President was on my phone. And he really wanted to hear what I had to say. Did he do anything with it? Not
sure. But the communication left me feeling a bit less bitchy and lot more likely to try them out again.Here’s some free publicity. Kudos, Trunk Club. And FYI, you’ve got a good social media team.

This is a marketing plan in search of a… market.

It assumes that I have no critical thinking abilities and that I am a profoundly neanderthalic (or deeply depressed) ape who can’t dress himself.

Depressing indeed. Sites like Trunk Club and J. Threads and Gilt and Fab would have me rejoice at giving up choice — or sustained thought — since they’ve made this assumption into an e-commerce business plan.
Having someone pack me a trunk full of what they think I’d like makes me feel more like a child being sent a summer camp care package than an expression of who I am as a mature, professional, adult male.
The basic tenet that shopping sucks is unbelievably prevalent in online retail brand campaigns and taglines. Why? Why would a retailer even step into those waters? I think it has something to do with fear. Brick, click, by whatever method, I have (and you have, too) become a powerful indicator of the market. If, by any measure, I can shop around the planet and determine my own price, what chance have the retailers? Instead, we are pounded into the dirt to believe that shopping (as men, in particular) is bothersome, gruelling, tedious and downright frivolous (code words, to be sure).

This rings very false. I’m hardly applauding my last Amazon purchase. And using my birth-given right to shop around and compare online, I did just that and my Amazon purchase saved me hundreds off a potential Trunk Club purchase.

So what can e-tailers offer me? Time savings? The day that I’m too busy to buy clothes is the day that I’m too busy. Convenience? I don’t need my e-commerce experience made any easier or faster. If things get any more convenient, I will shortly become a glob of fat with two eyes and wheels for feet so that I can be simply pushed towards my voice-activated laptop/shopping machine/ad viewer thing.

Sure, I really don’t like shopping some days. Those are the days that I don’t shop. At all.