Post-modernism is the new black

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: Dominated by 22 pillars, the long grey neoclassical 1909 façade of Selfridges, one of London’s great department stores, seems anachronistic. The exterior suggests values—of grandeur, dignity and authority—from another era. The interior doesn’t. Consumer anarchy reigns, with over 3,000 different brands, all in their own concessions, screaming for attention.

Selfridges nearly went out of business (as so many department stores have done) in the 1990s. But it reinvented itself by dismissing the order, formality and stillness of the old stores. Every brand was given its head and allowed to do what it wanted. Uniforms are out, as is standard decor, shelving and presentation. There is no hierarchy of goods; watches compete with perfume, luggage with high fashion, cafés with fast food. Shows, action and stunts break up the day. Selfridges calls it “shopping entertainment”.

So successful is it that two years ago a panel of style gurus voted it Britain’s “coolest brand”.

Jean-François Lyotard might not have enjoyed an afternoon at Selfridges. He was a French philosopher not known for his interest in handbags. But, had he dropped in for a little retail therapy, he might have recognised what he saw. As he wrote, “eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture; one listens to reggae, watches a Western, eats McDonald’s food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and retro clothes in Hong Kong; knowledge is a matter for TV games.”

Lyotard’s name would not be the first that springs to mind when tracing the roots of contemporary retailing and business. Of course many unlikely thinkers and doers, from Sun Tzu, a Chinese general and purveyor of top strategy tips, to Sir Ernest Shackleton, a British explorer celebrated as the ultimate team-builder, have been unwittingly roped into management. The sub-genres of marketing, branding, trend-spotting and business organisation all have their own thought-leaders.

That said, the French philosophers whose interest in accessories was limited to a Gauloise drooping stylishly from the corner of the mouth do not seem natural retail gurus. Yet there is a curious (and, given their contempt for consumption, somewhat ironic) relationship between today’s shops and the ideas of the French post-modernists.

Pomo power