Sweet Dreams.(shopping psychology)(Editorial)

Byline: Linda Wells, Editor in Chief

One morning in the lobby of the Ritz hotel in Paris, I ran into a colleague who was lugging a big canvas bag. "Shopping so early?" I asked him. "Nope, not shopping," he said. "This is my laundry."

The idea of popping into a Laundromat between fashion shows to save euros was almost absurd under the circumstances. For those weeks in Europe, the fashion press behave like royalty, or at least like B-list celebrities. We wear our best dresses and highest heels; we have drivers who zip us around the city in polished cars; we spend our days in tents in the Tuileries gardens and in designer showrooms, nonchalantly riffling through clothes covered in hand-sewn beads that cost tens of thousands of dollars. And between the shows, we shop.

We shop as if it's a competitive sport, trying on shoes and coats and T-shirts covered in hand-sewn beads. We stock up on evening bags and statement jewelry, snipping off the price tags and changing our clothes before cocktails, before dinner, before the party where Katy Perry/Lily Allen/Kylie Minogue is performing.

This season, though, as news alerts of the stock-market free fall appeared on our BlackBerries, we did a little less shopping (and a little more laundry). Between shows, I ducked into art museums instead of boutiques. I needed to see beauty, but I wasn't sure I needed to own it.

I met with my team over coffee and discussed ...