Was it designer glut, casual Friday, the sense that took hold among consumers of walking into department stores and feeling that every day was an outtake from "Groundhog Day," everything always the same?
Wear comfortable shoes because you could be doing a lot of walking during department and campus tours.
Later, in the 1980s, when I had my own pocket money, I'm walking around department stores, able to buy my own lipstick -- and the cosmetics that I saw there were either about costume-y full-face Chanel, or sanitized Clinique.
During the nineteen-twenties, he walked through department stores, riffing into a megaphone on the day's remarkable deals, as customers trailed him up and down the aisles.
After walking through the department in the ensuing days and talking to workers, he said: "People in this department are an unusual group.
Walking into a department store isn't the easy experience it once was.
Walking into a department store or boutique, you'll have the same problem.
"Buying the company is rather like walking past a department store, admiring the Belgian chocolates, and then buying the entire shop to get at them," admits Mr Watt.
"You don't know the humiliation of walking in a department store and you're assumed to be a suspect rather than a customer," Mr. Sharpton said.
Sifting through the 6,000 or so looks shown by 221 designers over the 9 days of Fashion Week feels a lot like spending too much time walking around a department store.
As Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College, nicely put it in a paper he wrote on the subject: "Imagine walking into a department store to buy a pair of slacks and being told by the salesman that in order to buy the pair you like, you would also have to buy a particular shirt, a particular tie and two pairs of socks.
