I’m fascinated by the phenomenon of the Anthropologie effect, because it’s been happening in my life and the lives of those around me for years now—but I’ve only recently become aware of it.
I first started noticing it (without realizing what to call it) around the fall of 2013, during the hipster trend’s main arc. My awareness that I was being marketed something different from what I was being sold continued to grow, until January of 2016, when I realized the effect and recognized it in my own purchasing patterns and lifestyle design. During that month, I planned a Galentine’s Day party for my college apartment and our friends. I designed a photo booth for the party, by making an Anthropologie-inspired, dried rose garland, and purchasing a customized party banner from an Etsy maker. In the process of designing this part, as well as the rest, of the party, I realized how much I was pursuing a highly individualized experience while reproducing something incredibly uniform and using conforming platforms to do so. And, to top it all off, I was doing so in a rather expensive fashion. Is a custom-made, rose-gold pink, twenty-five dollar (plus shipping and handling) “LADIES FIRST” banner really necessary for a party to be a good one? I was certainly convinced, thanks to the pervasion of the Anthropologie effect into my lifestyle design.
a personal perspective
Once I recognized this phenomenon in my planning process, I started seeing it all around me in Ann Arbor. In cultivated, independent bookstores, in tiny, overpriced lattes delivered in boutique cafés, in social media posts galore. Most surprisingly, I was immediately able to look back at my own Instagram feed and see just how Anthropologie-affected my lifestyle design had become. Making brunch at home turned into an opportunity for a photo shoot and whimsical caption. (This caption, of course, centered on making breakfast in the afternoon, because I couldn’t wake up early enough to overcome the challenge of making crepes without a crepe pan. Ah, college.) The post, below, mimicked many I had seen on my Instagram feed or on Pinterest before having composed my own shot. In seeking opportunities to confirm my individuality and interact with my experiences, I used the same processes as everyone else around me, nullifying that original effort immediately.
This is not to say that the Galentine’s Day party didn’t go splendidly, nor that my Instagram posts didn’t receive praise, nor that the handmade cards I loved (and still love) to use in sharing my thanks or well-wishes hadn’t been cherished. The subtlety of the Anthropologie effect allowed me to succeed in appearing individualized to my audience, even though this was not truly the case.
HINDSIGHT
I grew up obsessed with the 1980s. I was raised on Tom Petty, The Eagles, and Journey; I spent my preteen Friday nights with John Hughes’s favorite actors and actresses; and I hated that straight hair was “in” instead of the teased, curly, voluminous hair popularized by Allure and Seventeen. I was confused by the 1990s, I didn’t understand grunge, and the poppin’ lip gloss trends of the early 2000s were ill-suited for a nerdy bookworm like myself. Living through each decade, I had a hard time identifying the overarching trends that will eventually define them to my children’s generation in the way that Cindy Crawford’s campaigns or the opening guitar solo of “Hotel California” immediately call to my mind thoughts of the eighties. Certainly, hindsight helps this defining process, but with my newfound awareness of living through the era affected by the Anthropologie effect, I can’t help but see this phenomenon playing out every day and across the years. Yet, nobody really seems to be talking about it—at least, not explicitly.
There exists this personalized connection between each product and each customer. Once this connection exists, the product is less of a product and more of a creation—it has a story and significance. This is even more so the case when the product is handmade, because more time and personalized effort are required for its composition. Not only have I come to see this phenomenon in the products I purchase, but also in the creations I imitate with my own creative work, like the greeting card pictured above. In mimicking the individuality I’ve been marketed, I’ve come to use my creative process as a way of interacting with the Anthropologie effect in a personalized—and yet uniform—manner, establishing connections between my inspirations and creations. This connective and relational phenomenon has developed over time, but now that I have become aware of it, I can’t help but consider the economic and ethical implications of participating, either wittingly or unwittingly, in the Anthropologie effect.
This connection between product and customer, which exists despite the unspoken social contract to pursue the Anthropologie effect, fascinates me, because I see it in my own life as well as the lives of those around me. Unmistakably, the Anthropologie effect affects the way my generation enters the workforce, spends its income, and builds a lifestyle. This is most noticeably the case as I approach the end of my college career and the beginning of my “adult” life. (Although, I won’t be an adult until I have my own Kitchenaid, a salary, and an adorable, cultivated apartment of my own.)
Physical & DIgital Composition
I have spent a few afternoons in Anthropologie, and the past few years (unwittingly) attempting to mimic the “cultivation of lifestyle” technique found in that store. This cultivation has come to influence how I compose both my daily lifestyle as well as my digital identity. Put simply, I’m drawn to really well thought-out things. More specifically, I’m drawn to really well thought-out and cleanly designed physical and digital spaces. This includes anything from a city park nestled between two skyscrapers to blogs and websites and digital presentations of knowledge. I spend a majority of my free time dawdling on Pinterest, diving into the community of crafting (and design) blogs that pins link to, and building my own Pinterest boards. I use these boards to build a digital, interactive composite image of my personality and to inspire my purchases as they shape my lifestyle design.
I’ve done this through spending time on and drawing inspiration from websites, mostly, especially Pinterest-linked blogs and Etsy. Most of the best bloggers have some sort of connection, be it direct or sponsorship-related, with a maker (or their own storefront) on Etsy. Their blogs act as documentation of their lifestyle designs and inspiration to their readers, while also enacting and encouraging the Anthropologie effect. Each blogger presents a unique ethos through their crafting design and their site design, but enacts this ethos in the same way as his or her peers as they use a whimsical, or creative, or quirky, but always thrifty, vibe in presenting their work. This same principle of individualized creativity spills over from the blogging community to affect social media networks, which are composed to best market this image of creativity (and its by-products, the actual products for sale).
This phenomenon is readily visible in my creative process; as the cultivator of both an Instagram feed and a crafting blog, I have come to constantly consider how to express in the digital space what I create in the physical space. For example, in creating the floral arrangement, above, with my mother, I knew what kind of shot I would use as soon as we chose the square vase for our composition. Our process of physical composition was considered within the context of my process of digital presentation.
Just last week, I patronized one of Ann Arbor’s newest neighborhood cafés, which markets itself as a health food snack bar. Countless customers rotated constantly along the counter, coming in for avocado toast or kale smoothies. While the food and drinks were prepared beautifully, these customers were paying for much more than the ingredients and the time taken to prepare them—they were buying the image associated with their purchases. More than anything else, that image included a unique, Instagrammable experience that allowed these patrons (myself included) the opportunity to seek individuality—in a highly uniform way. My acai bowl, below, was one of many that was consumed that morning, unremarkably run-of-the-mill, until I chose to individualize my physical experience through digital interpretation.
When combined with economic considerations, Anthopologie-affected physical and digital composition become a process where unwitting reproduction of this phenomenon is rather concerning. It is one matter to make an expensive purchase while fully aware of the socio-economic implications of said purchase; it is another matter entirely to act upon a reproduced phenomenon without an understanding of what is being reproduced, or why it is being done in that manner. As we interact with the marketplace and design our lifestyles, awareness of this reproduction is necessary to interact with the Anthropologie effect without becoming unwittingly swept up in its steep prices for uniformly distributed individuality.
Closing Remarks
Thank you for exploring the Anthropologie effect with me! I hope that my investigations have encouraged you to consider your lifestyle design and the trends in which you participate. I see no harm in participating in the Anthropologie effect, as long as we do so knowingly and consiously, rather than unwittingly reproducing a phenomenon with causes and implications we don't understand. More than anything, I hope I've encouraged you to consider the implications of your next shopping experience or Instagram post, not only recognizing what you are doing but understanding why you're doing it.