Shopping with Artists: The Rise of the Artisanal Store

Picture a classic American shopping mall: the fountain, the two-story rows of shops, the food court. Reminiscent of “Clueless” and “Mean Girls,” these malls captivated American popular culture for decades. Indoor plazas such as these served as the center of American daily life since the 1950s, when the European architect Victor Gruen sought to recreate the quintessential “town square” in suburban America.

With the development of online shopping in recent years, the shopping mall has fallen out of fashion. Customers don’t need to visit highly concentrated shopping centers to purchase goods, and there has been a growing distaste for supporting large, impersonal companies. As a result, consumer values and tastes are turning to purchasing smaller-scale, artisanally sourced products, and the concept of the artisanal store was born.

Artisanal stores are essentially a modern adaptation of the typical general store — a one-stop shop that sells a wide variety of products. Artisanal stores, selling a vast array of products, maintain a special emphasis on goods made by craftspeople, artisans, artists, and small-scale companies that preserve the store’s ethos.

From large-scale yet artisanally focused companies like Etsy to small-scale boutiques that offer a wide range of themed products, artisanal stores have become a staple of modern in-person shopping — and they exist in a variety of formats and price ranges.

Take the Boston General Store, for example. This Brookline establishment sells a variety of homewares and stationary made by different small-scale companies from around the world, but with particular emphasis on U.S.-based manufacturers. This more expensive version of the artisanal store collects items that fit in their atmosphere of classic American ware, and the space is designed with the brand’s products in mind.

Through their curated design, shops like the Boston General Store follow an immersive approach to the shopping experience, allowing customers to wander, explore, and meander through the space. Likewise, by incorporating a homey, collected, and antique feeling, such stores put visitors at ease and force them to slow down and appreciate the art of shopping as much as the products themselves.

This particular shopping practice coincides with another growing trend: slow living. In the age of the fast consumption of media, much of Gen Z exhibits a growing distaste for this fast-paced life and were labeled by psychologist Jonathan Haidt as “The Anxious Generation” — the title of his new book.

Coupled with the societal anxieties spurred by Covid-19, many are looking to slow down and ground themselves by living a simpler life. This can be seen with a newfound love of home cooking, reading, and a reluctance to go back to the tedious nine to five.

This desire to slow down and reflect manifests itself in various art forms as well. On April 24, The New York Times released an interview with jazz singer Laufey on how she speaks to the anxious generation. Laufey is known for her slow, melodic, and vintage-esque sound and her covers of old classic songs, like “Misty,” for example.

In her song, “Like the Movies,” Laufey sings, “Oh, I’d like to sleep in ‘til two on a Sunday / And listen to the bluebirds sigh.”

There is a clear desire in these lyrics to live a simple, quiet life, and this theme genuinely connects with a young audience. This growing trend for nostalgic feel-good art is present across various media, including, quite recently, film — as seen with movies like “The Taste of Things,” starring Juliette Binoche.

The concept of the artisanal store feeds off this growing nostalgia for simplicity in lifestyle, art, and other media. By offering customers the opportunity to support local artists and small businesses, artisanal stores can capitalize on this ever-growing trend, satiating customers’ desire to support local artists and purchase something that was made individually with care and thought.

Even more, artisanal stores tend to sell products that boast a vintage and timeless quality, a practice that counteracts the widespread “fast fashion” movement — or the overproduction of clothes to keep up with the rapidly changing trends — that has been growing more prominent over the past few decades.

Countering the unsustainable practice of fast fashion, artisanal stores are able to offer a moral appeal to customers, as many of their products are meant to last for years due to their higher quality. This concept of stability and long-term rewards offers a grounding effect that is refreshing when juxtaposed with the overwhelming influx of trendy single-use fashion.

Unfortunately, many artisanal stores fall victim to charging exorbitantly high prices for their products. While artisanal goods do require a higher monetary input into their production due to their handmade nature, there has been a growing trend of treating artisanal goods as luxury items — especially given the exponential markups of many products by these artisanal stores. Should the emphasis on artisanal products continue for the long term, perhaps they will become more of a staple and accessible product in American society — but, for now, many such stores maintain a certain atmosphere of exclusivity.

Artisanal stores offer something important to a nostalgia-seeking American culture: permanence. With often timeless and classic products, such stores resist the fast changing trends of the time and, even more importantly, support artists, craftspeople, and small-scale businesses. While still imperfect, the rise of the artisanal store is a welcome development in American culture, and one can only hope that it’s here to stay.

—Staff writer Thomas A. Ferro can be reached at thomas.ferro@thecrimson.com.