The Nordstrom closest to my home has three floors of shoes, and it’s pretty clear that there is a hierarchy among the sections. As you scale the escalators, the quality and price of the goods in the shoe sections skyrocket. It makes sense, in a way; just like the food chain, the strongest and most valuable species rest comfortably atop the ladder. Those concealed-platform Gucci stilettos literally and physically look down upon any all other shoes. Hierarchies are everywhere, but Nordstrom displays their shoes in such a way that every other shopper can see where you fit in in the heel-eat-heel world of footwear.
The first floor’s shoe section has the basest specimens – Crocs, low-heeled Bat Mitzvah pumps, sandal boots, you name it, that floor has it. It’s the scene for sixth-graders who desperately need a new pair of Skechers before the first day of school or the final resting place for Steve Madden’s half-baked attempt at sneakers.
The third floor, elevated into the heavens, is the store’s breadwinner. I’m sure that when profits look low at the end of the month, Nordstrom thanks its lucky planets that it has this third floor of shoes. Cream-colored Manolo Blahnik flats rest comfortably next to plum colored sky-high patent leather Christian Louboutins that beg you to spend half your paycheck. The salespeople scurry around silently to ensure that every pair is hand selected for quality, sacrificing foot comfort along the way. But who cares? There’s a matching bag to go with that pair of Jimmy Choo strappy sandals, and at that point, the price difference is negligible.
Then there’s the second floor. If you asked me what shoes they sell on the second floor, I really couldn’t tell you because in my mind, it’s a sea of mules and orthopedic flip flops. My sister and I termed it as a go-to place when you can comfortably announce, “I’ve reached middle age. I give up!” There are so many pairs of shoes in that section, but they are all indistinguishable and bland. How do they possibly find so many ugly pairs of shoes? Who buys them? Everyone browsing through the selections always looks bewildered, probably because they thought they were on the third floor. Boy, were they wrong.
I’m always fascinated by these hierarchies – ones that everyone inherently acknowledges but never truly considers until they experience it in the flesh. More distinctly, we only really stop and consider them when we observe the lowest on the totem pole; then we compare. After all, no one remembers that Jon Cryer is the poor man’s Mark Ruffalo, who is the poor man’s Matthew Broderick, until they watch a movie and think “Hey! He’s just like that other guy, but probably gets paid $20,000 less per role.” And no one wants to say that people with 17-inch MacBook Pros appear vaguely more sophisticated and savvy than the bozo that hauls ass to class every day with their 6-pound industrial gray Dell. But I’m sure they think it. I do, and I have a 6-pound industrial gray Dell. These instantaneous, tiny mental notes we take about people’s presences and possessions form our general understanding of their identity. Taken separately, these objects are in and of themselves mini hierarchies. By taking stock of the highest, middle-est, and lowest possible types of a commodity, we can place the person in question into a comfortable little niche.
What Nordstrom does is place shoppers into their shoeocracy for everyone to see. If people see you browsing innocently through the first floor section, they’ll think you’re cheap – or worse, a teenybopper! If people see you gaze at the third floor section’s display, they’ll think you’re a snob. But once you drop cash on your shoes and leave the store, it’s irrelevant. Untrained eyes don’t know what floor you bought your shoes on, unless you’re wearing clogs. Outside of Nordstrom’s context, the only person it really matters to is you, and if you buy your shoes on the first floor, then you probably saved enough to afford something a little more useful than clogs. After all, even self-contained hierarchies like Nordstrom’s need someone to rest at the bottom. So go forth, prosper and get your shoes from whatever floor you want! Unless it’s the second floor. Then you’re pretty much screwed.
Terri Pous is a Medill junior. She can be reached at [email protected].
