Retailers Decline Along With Civility

As one who has been around long enough to have seen any number of retail changes, your article on declining department sales brought to mind what seem to me obvious reasons [“Luxury Retailers Hurt as Consumers Scale Back,” June 4].

Perhaps foremost is the decline of style in the stores themselves. A Macy’s is no Bullocks, nor does Robinsons-May bear any resemblance to Robinson’s. In those stores, merchandise was artfully displayed, easily located and sold to you by helpful and well-dressed salespeople who knew the garments, what went with them and what else the store might have that you might like.

Today it’s a hodgepodge of overstuffed racks crammed together in unidentified spaces. Add to this the complete ignorance of the sales staff, who may be wearing jeans and tennis shoes, and you have destroyed any pleasure in shopping.

And you certainly won’t get any “help.” If you are trying on clothes and need another size, you will have to get dressed and go find it yourself. In this environment, you might as well shop in a warehouse.

Although I personally detest warehouse shopping, there is no denying that a place like Target (and it is one of the best) has very good specials. You won’t get a lot of selection, but you often get some very good deals on specific items.

Fortunately, there are a few stores that do not fall into this category. That includes Nordstrom most of the time, and Talbots and a few other boutiques all of the time. But that’s it for the mass marketers.

I realize that people like me can be dismissed as hopelessly passe, but there is a loss of grace and civility that permeates society, and treating people like cattle, e.g., herding them through depersonalized stores, is very much a part of that.

Carolyn Ziegler-Davenport

Arcadia