Adam receives the news of Barney’s Boston opening with a deserved raised eyebrow. How could you not, when the article so uncritically quotes beaming with Boutique Boosterism:
"I have a sense that Boston is coming of age, and Barneys is the big fat engagement ring that’s going to seal the deal," says Lisa Pierpont, a producer of WCVB’s "Chronicle" and a close follower of Boston’s fashion and retail scene. "New Englanders are starting to throw out their wool sweaters and are expressing themselves more through clothing. You see it in the window displays of the stores on Newbury Street. You have stores like Relic that I don’t think could have existed in Boston five years ago."
Undoubtedly, high-end shoppers do share that thesis. But it overlooks one thing: the change is as much in the change in marketing high-end fashion (call in Tom Fordism) toward mass-market branding, toward an international cosmopolitan class, and toward selective luxury consumption, as it does in any cultural zeitgeist of Boston per se.
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