I walked into a clothes shop called Hollister yesterday in the Dundrum Shopping Centre. I had heard about the hype surrounding the shop when it opened and on further reading, realised that this shop doesn’t really cater for the likes of me. To my eyes, it reads very much like Abercrombie and Fitch, which probably makes me even more uncool.
Anyway, in the middle of the shopping centre stood a shop front, which looked like a cross between a beach hut and a Chinese restaurant, and there was no evidence of a sign to let me know if it were either.
I walked in to be greeted by a less attractive version of what greets you in an Abercrombie and Fitch store. Except for this, it was identical: loud dance music, too dark to see the clothes and thousands of teenagers.
I walked out and the greeter bid me adieu – I’m certain she had no recollection that she had greeted me ten seconds earlier – and walked back into reality. Well, Dundrum-style reality. I recovered by going to the new bookshop, which has great advantages such as having free wifi and no Starbuck-moms. Speaking of which, we walked past some expensive baby-shop and in the window there was a Bugaboo pram with a coffee-cup holder on it with an empty Starbucks cup in it. All that was missing was a place to store their Hollister-clad teenager’s Ugg boots for when it rains.