Best Practices In Shopping Luxury Online

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed a lot of things in our lives, not the least of which is the way we shop. Many of us haven’t set foot in any establishment for the past several weeks, ordering such essentials as groceries online and having drinks with our friends via Zoom or some equivalent. And as the country gradually opens for business—whatever your thoughts on this—we will undoubtedly remain wary of what we used to call “life” and all the face-to-face interactions it entails.

I, like others, sense that things will be irrevocably changed by the time we reach the juncture of a new normal, though I don’t know precisely what this means for the retail scene. Our self-constructed cocoons, inherently lonely as they are, feel safe, and security will be high on our minds for the foreseeable future. Besides, there aren’t many shopping needs that can’t be met right from our own permanently indented couches. Right?

Buying things that typically require interaction can be trickier. Like experiencing the buttery tactility of a new leather purse. Or testing the weight and balance of a coveted writing instrument, understood only by true pen aficionados.

Not so, says Chris Sullivan, president of Fahrney’s pen shop in Washington, D. C. Having perfected the art of online commerce many years ago, he says a high-touch, taste-driven object, like a pen, may indeed be successfully purchased sight unseen. In fact, very little of his company’s modus operandi has changed during the past several weeks, even though the brick-and-mortar downtown store has temporarily closed its doors due to the novel coronavirus. Website, phone and catalog sales are booming, he shares, and the majority of Fahrney’s sales—as usual—are via its uber-friendly web store and its equally amicable catalog.

“Our parents started Fahrney’s catalog in 1975,” says Sullivan of the pre-internet venture. “It was a time of infancy for the catalog industry itself, yet alone a writing instrument catalog. All the pen brands, distributors and sales reps said it would never work! ‘Why would the customer buy from a catalog sight unseen without trying the pen first?’”

Is This The Best Way To Preserve Your Travel Memories (And Sanity)?

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." Though the philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote these words in 1654, they still ring true over three centuries later. As Covid-19 has resulted in a mass lockdown throughout the country (and indeed the world), the stir-crazed side effects of said isolation is a pandemic all its own.

But, before I reveal the solution to restoring your sanity amidst the ongoing distancing of the self, a confession: Before quarantining this past March, I was—to put it lightly—the opposite of locked down. As a travel writer, I ventured to 41 countries in the past 23 months under the guise of professional advancement and personal fulfillment—never staying in one place long enough to unpack my bags and catching the next flight like it would be my last.

Though no one on the planet could have predicted the virus's ferocious spread back in 2018, it's safe to say I'd spent the past two years traveling as if a plague was coming. One that would confine you to your trustiest, most reliable form of shelter—for celebrities, a Beverly Hills mansion, for others, perhaps a one-bedroom apartment. For me: My childhood bedroom. (Travel writers aren't known for maintaining stately personal residences.) And, though my years of traversing the globe seemed to fly by in minutes, the past two months in lockdown seem to have lasted two lifetimes and more.

I'd argue that it's not only the absence of variety that has caused the widespread blues while sheltering-in-place but also the lack of freedom of movement. It's losing the mere possibility of venturing beyond our mundane day-to-day lives that's caused such a tremendous dearth of inspiration and excitement. You don't need to be a professional globetrotter to mourn the sense of opportunity that travel inspires, the idea that you can jet off to France—not today, not tomorrow, and, now, maybe not until the end of December. (2021 will be our year.)