Now the hotel gift shop has better styling ideas than fashion storefront

The most dangerous sentence in a hotel is probably, “Oh, they sell this downstairs.” You hear it after breakfast, usually while still wearing the hotel robe, and suddenly you are making your way towards the lobby with the casual determination of someone who has absolutely no intention of buying anything. Ten minutes later, you are holding a straw hat, a bottle of room fragrance, and a shirt with the hotel’s initials embroidered so discreetly you can pretend it is not merch. You tell yourself the shirt is a souvenir. Then you wear it to dinner that night.

This is how the hotel gift shop gets you. In a mall, I can walk through three floors without finding anything I want. Put me in a hotel I have been enjoying for 48 hours, and I suddenly become very interested in buying a $40 cap. I haven’t become richer, wiser, or more fashion-forward. I have simply been lying by a pool and eating strawberries I did not buy myself. Of course I want the cap. The cap has been part of the fantasy.

This is the bit fashion retail sometimes forgets. We are not particularly good at buying objects in isolation. We like a little context. You notice the scent in the lobby without even realising you have noticed it. Then you discover the ceramic cup beside the coffee machine is for sale, and suddenly you need to own it. This is not shopping in the conventional sense. It is a mild form of kidnapping.

For a long time, the hotel gift shop was treated as the place where holidays went to become embarrassing. There were keychains, fridge magnets, T-shirts announcing where you had been, miniature bottles of something vaguely alcoholic and postcards featuring a landmark you had photographed seventeen times yourself.

The more interesting hotel shops have quietly changed the proposition. The souvenir no longer needs to announce the destination. It can be a beautifully made object from a local designer, a piece of jewellery, a candle, a woven bag, a cookbook, a shirt or a piece of furniture. Take the bathrobe. A bathrobe is an objectively strange garment. At home, it means you are between activities. In a hotel, it becomes a uniform for doing absolutely nothing. You walk around your room in one, feeling vaguely important. You order coffee, open the curtains, sit on the balcony. Eventually you find yourself thinking, I could actually be
someone who lives a slow life and owns a robe like this. A bit ambitious, maybe. You could just settle for the robe, though!

And this is where the gift shop becomes unexpectedly useful for figuring out personal style. Fashion asks you to imagine the life in which you would wear the thing. A hotel lets you borrow life first, and that distinction matters.

I don’t necessarily know that I like linen shirts. I know that I like linen shirts when there is a balcony involved. I don’t know whether I am a silk scarf person. I know that a silk scarf looks considerably more convincing when there is a vintage car somewhere nearby. The setting is doing some of the styling.

Research also explains our slightly ridiculous attachment to souvenirs. A 2006 study of 398 tourists found that travel motivations influenced not only what souvenirs people purchased but also the attributes they valued in the products and the retail environments where they bought them. That’s why a postcard costing $9 in a hotel lobby feels offensive until you remember you are not really paying $9 for cardstock. You are paying for the fact that, six months from now, you will find it inside a book and remember the exact table where you sat when you bought it.

There is something refreshing about buying an object because it belongs somewhere. It does not need to announce a trend. It does not need to be “the next big thing.” It can simply be beautiful, useful and connected to a place. The hotel gift shop has an advantage fashion cannot easily manufacture: you have already fallen in love with the setting. The purchase comes afterwards.

So the next time you wander downstairs and find yourself standing in front of a rack of linen shirts you absolutely did not plan to buy, don’t panic. Try one on. See what it does in the light. You may discover that you don’t actually want the shirt. You may discover that you want the life around it. And, frankly, that is what fashion has been selling us all along.

Image: Getty Images and Pexels

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