I listened to a podcast with former coach CEO and the one who built up the powerhouse brand, Lew Frankfort, and he talked about their tagline: magic and logic. Of his team, he says, “we are a performance family. We want to build something, we have belief.”

One of the members of that family was highlighted this week in the Wall Street Journal, and Lew is right, she has a belief and her vision is reshaping the brand, deepening that magic and extending through anthropological insights. Chief Marketing Officer Joon Silverstein is the anthropologist, and her focus on studying their “dream customer” – the 18-30 year old – has produced discoveries that are both insightful and telling as she uncovers their dreams for their closets and lives.

This cultural lens, for Silverstein, has “shaped my entire career.”

What do these young women want? They want to be relevant. Coach wants the same thing. Their market capitalizing fell to a new low in 2015 to $11 billion (compared to $22 billion in 2011).

The also want sustainable fashion.

They see identity as fluid, not fixed. (Coach can help with this: charm bracelets, that you can change as you wish!)

Collaborations help with this too.

Most completing in this article is the journey Silverstein is on to understand the deeper stories we tell ourselves as people and as brands: “it’s really easy to be seduced by your own myths, to think that, for example, every Coach customer out there is that cool Brooklynite wearing vintage… but our brand is about scale, and we need to he acquiring customers at scale.”

Just across that fold is an article on Bloomingdale’s. My favorite place on the planet right there on 59th. I used to wander on Sunday afternoons to clear my head and prepare for the workweek. Really.

The article, “Bloomingdale’s is defying the demise of department stores,” is another anthropological study, this time we learn that they attribute their five straight quarters a

of sales growth to a strategy and focus on alternative, affordable luxury. They are renovating stores and adding salespeople, and giving brands “more control over how they’re merchandise is displayed within Bloomingdale’s.”

Some of them are even designing the spaces.

They are leaning into the experience that we all enjoy, but that is becoming more of a rarity: a store experience where the vibes and experience are clearly curated, artistic, ephemeral.

The store there has been a “cultural touchstone” since first developed by the Bloomindale brothers, Joseph and Lyman. This touchstone remains central to their strategy no matter how much online shopping evolves, they are firm believers in making sure the in-person experience is magic. The challenge is translating the “magic” of 59th street store across all of their locations.

The magic for their team also lives in bringing their vendors together as partners. They share shopping data, they host in-store summits, they train and encourage their teams across the store – from personal shoppers to those in each vendors’ space – to create a welcoming, friendly environment for shoppers.

Loved reading the comments on this article to. Most of them are rooting for Bloomsdale’s and bemoaning the cultural shift to online or boring brick and mortar: “the store is heartening for retail.”

As both Bloomingdales and Coach lean into the customer, their tale of success is one we can learn from. Who are we really, and how do we want to build lives and make choices in community. What I think we can take at the core is the desire for beauty and connection, and the importance for these brands of building spaces that allow for those moments. Shopping is a personal experience, tied up with our feelings about ourselves, nostalgia or remembrance of items that matter to us, and the hope – always the hope! – of finding that gem of an item that makes us feel special, ready, unique – ourselves!

Shopping is an experience of becoming. Who will we be with this dress, what will we feel with these shoes, where will this suit take us? Silverstein’s lens, the one that asks who we really are, is powerful. What stories do we tell ourselves as we shop, and how do these change over time.

I still remember many of my favorite purchases from Bloomindales – a pair of round tortoiseshell sunglasses (pictured – standing outside Bloomingdale’s in 2012 feeling very proud of them!), my firs pair of statement earrings – black and gold – a briefcase for David’s birthday. Purchases embedded in the experience of wandering the store on a Sunday afternoon, seeing things I couldn’t (yet!) afford, learning about pattern and structure, hoping and anticipating the places these outfits would take me. I loved it, still do, and that is part of why I think shopping – becoming and dreaming – really is *magic*!

What strikes me most about both of these stories is the discipline of paying attention. Silverstein is studying people the way an anthropologist studies a culture. Bloomingdale’s is studying the rituals of shopping itself: what makes people wander, pause, and feel something.

In other words, they are doing what great leaders do: observing human behavior and building systems around it. Strategy begins with people.