Critically Speaking

So I'm pretty certain that I'm not a lone Material Girl in a material world. There must and should be many of us whose eye for aesthetics isn't limited to what they like to wear and where they like to travel to. Or maybe it is for the moment - and you'd love to expand upon your raw instinctive sense of "taste" - then let's discuss it. Let's discuss taste across the board and how I use my lens in everyday life.

The truth is simple really… I critique EVERYTHING, until I'm all out of opinion.

It's no secret that I love to shop. It truly makes for the most dangerous companion to my love of fashion, but shopping isn't just therapy - it's also a creative expedition.

Let me set the scene for you here… I'm STEPPING.

And by stepping I mean hitting a mean stride through Westfield with Azealia Banks - Luxury blaring through my headphones at full volume, blissfully drowning out the audible chaos of my surroundings. Somehow fully present, yet completely in my own world.

On my pursuit for my latest K-beauty find - no doubt heavily influenced by my beauty influencer "flavour of the month" - I march to the beat directly into one of the UK's most popular drugstores. The beauty of drowning out the surrounding chaos means that my Material Girl spidey senses are operating at their best, as I watch everyone navigate the store around me. I watch as customers malfunction with confusion trying to find what they're looking for. I watch as the queue to ask the only sales assistant in sight grows and grows - there's only so much searching one can do before the frustration of delayed gratification grows beyond tolerance… but therein, my love of people watching bears fruit.

I can recognise the problem instantly.

In an effort to encourage customers to take in the entire store, the experience itself had been lost. The aisles are too long - the customer is required to walk the entire length whether or not the product they need is there. The shelves are too high and the signage too low - the excessively backlit shelves that tower over you feel something like climbing Mount Everest for a lip liner. The layout is completely exhausting and, after modifying their roles to resemble a personified signpost, so are the staff.

To know me personally likely consists of being sick to death of hearing the question "why?" But in these instances that question is non-negotiable. It's the single factor that elevates all of these observations from consumer annoyance or frustration and makes them CRITIQUE… opinions and critique are divided by the why that transforms one into actionable items.

THAT is my favourite part.

The "how could it be done better" part.

Anyway, I left the store with nothing, my retail therapy itch went unscratched but I was invigorated by being able to identify my critical thinking in real time - I can only liken it to the difference between sharpening your lip liner first or… not.

Please sharpen your lip liner ladies. We'll save my credentials on this for a later date.

The transaction element of this shopping experience may have fallen by the wayside, but I did leave Westfield with a head full of ideas and I suppose (thankfully) a pocket full of cash, which happens so rarely that I'm forced to consider it a win. For someone who will continue to rant and rave about extracting value - I can now consider myself a Material Girl whose lens can see value beyond RRP and a big red SALE sticker.

I suppose that's a very long way to introduce Material Girl's first column - Critically Speaking, where we'll be critiquing everything and solidifying ourselves as connoisseurs of fine taste.