The Forgotten Glories of Department Stores
Amazon offers shoppers unlimited choices. But a limited selection of well-chosen options offers a different—and more useful—kind of convenience.
I renewed my relationship with department stores two years ago, on a sopping wet September evening in Amsterdam after a workshop I had been invited to participate in. Thousands of miles away from my home in Canada, I had just received the kind of invitation a lifelong film nerd like me could not refuse: a spot at a premiere party at the Toronto International Film Festival. The problem: It was happening the night I was to return from Europe.
“I can make it,” I insisted to my doubtful colleagues in Amsterdam. “I’ll have just enough time to go home, shower and change, then leave. I just have nothing to wear when I get there.”
They all had the same recommendation: De Bijenkorf.
They led me through pouring rain along swollen
