Just a few photos of all the flowers in our retail stores right now. These photos I’m sharing with you today are from a day of window shopping in Scottsdale. It’s our Beverly Hills…you know what I mean, just over the top in pricing. The energy is different then the places I normally shop at. I like church sales, estate sales, second hand shops and small mom and pops.
In Scottsdale, expect to see $1,000 patio chairs, $400 perfumes, $700 dollar dresses and $500 raincoats and those are the cheaper items. Expect to see bouncer type guards at some of these stores with little red ropes across their entrances. They decide on whether you are allowed in or not. Not all shops are like that but there are a few that have bouncer type guards at their entrances.
This is where you go to have someone else park your car for you…Ferrari’s, corvettes, all kinds of expensive sports cars parked and guarded in little protective pockets.
This is not a shopping environment I’m used to or even comfortable in. But sometimes it’s fun to just walk around and do some window shopping once in awhile.
Scottsdale Fashion square is the largest mall in Arizona at 2 million square ft. of retail spaces.
There is a certain energy in really posh areas. An ugly energy to me. Brands are the kings and queens that rule in areas like that. Probably why I try to stay away from them. How much debt does one have to go through to keep up with this lifestyle, or what does one have to do to be at a level to be able to shop this lifestyle. Maybe I don’t want to know.
This isn’t coming from a place of bitterness. I truly have never understood trends or brands. I will never fit into that kind of life style. I see the cruelty in it and the unhappiness that in the end is it’s final outcome.
This was a really beautiful store. They had a water fountain in the middle of the store.
These photos and everything in them and what they represent…they’re just things. We need to remember that. So many go into debt in order to feed this beast of keeping up with it all… and the name of the beast is called insecurity.
Wasn’t quick enough when taking this photo, so my shot was taken when the woman in one ad was merging into changing into a man in another ad. In the middle was a weird image that kind of reminds me of a beast with a long lizard tongue. When I saw what had happened after I got home and uploaded the camera I almost deleted this mistake of mine, but decided to keep this, it tells a story of what shopping in the year of 2023 was like. Sometimes cameras capture things we don’t even realize we are seeing.
Thought I share with you all something a little different with my shopping adventures, this isn’t my normal mom and pop kind of shopping. Modern day gathering for me is mostly done in old school environments, while I still can that is…everything is changing so fast.
Just remember what the most beautiful thing is in all of this is..it’s the people that surround these products. Sadly some of these people don’t even realize how much better they are then the items they admire.
A strange image to me. There is hardly anyone around in this area that is under construction. The shops are opened…but where are the people? One person stands out the most in this shot, the mother all in black looking down at her cell phone with her two small children in front of her.
Anyway, most of the photos down below are some of the lower price products, not like the over the top brand name stores I walked into. Some of those top brand stores would not allow my camera inside them. Those were the kinds of stores with bouncer type men guarding their doors that I was writing about above. So sorry, no photos to share of those items.
No cameras allowed…cell phones are welcomed though. Guess I’m too old school. Cell phones are actually great cameras, they do everything…even record live footage.
I can explain what I saw though. The clothes are very bland, very robotic in their style. Some of the cuts, colors and styles reminded me of the first Star Wars movie, not the bad guys…you know…but more like Luke Skywalker type clothes. And some classic styles that have been around for decades, nothing new there.
There were also a lot of 80’s type designs and colors. Another brand name store painted polka dots on their popular purses and called it art. You can pay hundreds of dollars for damaged purses, just my opinion, but then I have always seen the emperor with having no clothes on and in this case that is exactly what I think is happening.
Everyone has their own taste, or do they?…maybe they are only following what the rest are telling them what to do. Can they even see that the Emperor has no clothes on, or are the distractions of these brands too fast of an image for them to ignore, blinding them to what is really going on. Like that ad I tried to get a shot of but another image would come out inside.
Then there were some stores I just didn’t feel like walking into, just not my cup of tea. Let me just say, I mean…write that is …
“There are some creepy trends out there right now.”
There are many times I started to walk up near a store, stop and just didn’t feel comfortable so I turned around and walked away. I bet that seems weird to someone reading this right now, or maybe not. I’m sure there are many of you who have done that yourselves, walking into an area and then walking away. You’re the ones who listen to those instincts that God has given to you. Gotten you out of a lot of situations too…hasn’t it?
So this is where all the people were. The mall was pretty empty when it came to shoppers on this day, and then I got to this shop and there was a crowd, Reminds me of a scene in that movie Aliens. I saw that movie a long time ago in the 80’s as a teenager, on a date. There is one scene when the solders are looking for where all the people went and finally find them all in one area…bingo we found them they said… if memory serves me right that is, or maybe it was another word…. Bingo…guess this is where all the people were in this mall the day I was shopping. And yes, it was really this dark in this part of the Mall. Also, not sure why, but there was a horrible sewage smell in this area. My daughter smelled it too. They were doing construction around the mall…maybe they were repairing pipes that day, but no workers were around.
These photos down below are from some of my favorite stores I walked into. Just really pretty Spring time products. Happy shopping adventures everyone and remember…no matter what you wear, or how rich or poor you see yourselves as, you are always better then what you believe/fear others may view you as.
So sad when people don’t understand what is really important…people are, people are important, not things. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy these photos of “Things”, nothing wrong with treating ourselves now and then. Everyone has their own taste, and that’s a good thing. Think how boring the world would be if we all wore the same things…how sad would that be. To each his own.
Everyone in this shop was friendly, So pretty. I will never outgrow anything with flowers or the color pink. I believe these earrings were $255 dollars.Trinket bowls are always fun to look through.So dainty, reminds me of Cinderella type slippers .There was a mom taking photos of her two little girls at this store. The little girls were dressed in floral dresses and pretty hair accessories. it was such a happy scene. I remember doing that with my two children when they were little. Sometimes when you window shop you can’t help but people watch too, all part of the experience. I didn’t realize until later that the mom photo bombed my shot I was taking of some pretty dresses. If you notice from my photos I try really hard to keep people out of them. If they are in the shots then their faces are some what hidden. That is very difficult to do. Even though you are allowed to take photos in public spaces I still try to be polite about sharing strangers faces…although sometimes this can’t be avoided…it just happens . These glasses were so cute, hearts and a peach color. I wonder if peach is coming back. Peach and sea foam were popular colors back in the 90’s.I did end up buying some pretty sun glasses. Here in Arizona you can never have too many sun glasses and hats to protect the eyes and skin. Most stores are really friendly and happy to let you take photos, this was one of those stores. Not getting anything for showing the name, just loved their store displays so I took many photos.In the middle of all these flowers are beautiful perfume bottles.Everything right now is covered in flowers.The theme in shoes is all about soft pastel Spring colors and nature.The Easter dresses are always so delicate looking. One time I had a birthday party for one of my kids and my friends little 2 year old niece was wearing a dress to the party that looked liked this, it was beautiful. There was chocolate cake at the birthday party, it ended up all over the dress. It reminded me of that movie Life is beautiful where the wife always wipes her dirty hands on her beautiful dresses, so funny. A shoe wreath? I’ve never seen a shoe wreath before…kind of pretty too. The colors of the bathing suits this year remind me of 80’s colors.A close up of the water fountain ball in one of my favorite stores we went into. It was much prettier in person. This photo doesn’t capture the whole experience.It doesn’t have to be Easter for me to decorate with rabbits, I like bunnies all the time, all year long. My daughter stopped off to test this perfume out. She said it has a baby powder smell. I believe she said the price is about $400 dollars. I’ll stick with my essential oils.The designer of this brand always had a childlike design to her brand to me. Sometimes if I see things like this I think the artist may have a hurt inner child in them. It’ sad how the story to this brand ended, the products are still around but the creator of them is no longer here to comfort that inner child of hers. What a fun way to display purses. One of my favorite parts of working retail years ago was window designs. I always enjoyed creating those type of displays. I don’t know, these dresses just aren’t doing it for me. Like a wedding dress for little girls. They are pretty but I feel they would be prettier if they were a little longer in the front and shorter in the back. Didn’t Jennifer Lopez wear a dress like this years ago? And now little girls are wearing them?There was no one in this shop, I didn’t see any employees around. I didn’t notice the lone woman in the back behind the curtains texting away when I first took this photo. So many people now days are looking somewhere else so much that they have no idea when another living person is standing right in front of them. We were both guilty of that.I liked the shape of these back packs and their colors. Again, these styles are reminding me of the 80’s.White and dark chocolate bunnies…yummy. I noticed lots of colors in the designs this season. This patio store was huge, three stories tall. All the employees in this store were very nice.Stuffed toys have changed so much. I remember Steiff animals of bears and elephants, or the Guntz brand of raccoons and puppies. That was the 80’s though. I used to collect stuffed toys back when I was a kid, they were so cute and friendlier looking back then. Some of these toys now days have scary expressions…like they all have bad attitudes.
Our Little Red House 