New Yorkers who fear not fitting in can hire a "curator" to style their life - what to buy, where to buy it and who to brag to, writes Kate Holmquist
Curate me, please. Style my life like you would the precious objects in a museum exhibit. Tell me where to live, what openings to go to, who my friends should be, what clothes to wear, where to holiday, which clubs to join. Because I'm so rich and successful that I haven't got time to waste living in the wrong place, meeting the wrong people, wearing the wrong clothes and kicking my heels at weekends when I should be doing something fabulous with fabulous people. If we aren't the summation of our possessions and "experiences", what are we?
Sound daft? Not if you live in New York, where life curation has become the cure for loneliness and disaffection. And, through advertising, life curation has become the buzzword for companies that want the added value acquired by selling niche lifestyles, rather than mass brands. So even if you think the trend is strange, you've probably succumbed already without knowing it.
This story starts in Manhattan, one of several cities where people go to recreate their lives. If you're from Minneapolis or San Francisco, being posted to New York by your company is the pinnacle, though when you get there you know no one, can't decide what condo to buy and feel the estrangement of the blow-in who can't break in.
To cope, New Yorkers have tried therapy, fitness coaching, life coaching, diet coaching, styling and being decorated out of existence in mansion-size apartments that scream "Wow" when you walk in the door. But when they walk out the door, the blow-ins haven't a clue where to eat, who to meet, who to date. Enter the curator, for which the dictionary definition is a person in charge of a museum or art collection, or the guardian of a minor, lunatic or other incompetent.
Life curators encompass a bit of both definitions - the person who helps you own all the right stuff and the person who helps you appear competent in an increasingly confusing consumer world. If you think of a life as a collection of experiences and objects charged to your gold card, then a curator is for you.
This week at Brown Thomas in Dublin, Quintessentially, a concierge service, began selling "experiences" as Christmas presents. Because now at parties, the done thing isn't to talk about what you own, but what you've experienced. The James Bond weekend in the south of France where you drive a fast car and endure a "mission" is for sale, though this is for amateurs. The truly curated already own the fast cars and villas in the south of France.
CURATING IS ABOUT giving life meaning and connecting with others, which makes sense, considerïng that the original deiniftion of "curate" is a person entrusted with the cure of souls.
The official arrival of life curation as a trend was marked in the New York Times last month, in an article that described how Allison Storr was curating the life of Brad Peik, a San Francisco real estate investor, by giving him a crash course on the intimidating art world as a preface for introducing him to the sort of New Yorkers he needed to know.
At a cost of up to $10,000 (€6,775) a month, Storr furnishes apartments and tells people what to wear and where to be seen. She provides contacts - interior designers, contractors, art dealers, fashion designers, hairdressers and potential social acquaintances. She organises summer parties in the Hamptons as well as good works. Currently, Storr is helping the president of a biopharmaceutical company plan a West Coast fund-raiser for research into Alzheimer's disease. She has been called an "outsourced wife" in the way that she organises connections and social lives in the manner of an old-fashioned partner boosting her man's career.
Superficial and desperate, you might say, yet none of us is immune from the trend. Because, while curators are helping people design their lives, the advertising world has diagnosed many of us as curators, rather than consumers.
In Advertising Age recently, Steven Addis wrote that marketing is passé. The target now is the privileged consumer as curator, whose purchasing choices set an example for others climbing the ladder. Addis wrote: "Their real power lies in their ability to sway millions of other consumers as curators. Curators with unlimited resources to research products, review them for others, and expose the disingenuous. Curators with the ability to broadcast on a mass scale. And curators with credibility that scandal-laden corporations have all but squandered."
EXPECT TO SEE more "curator brands" that pander to individuality, from salad dressings to cars. For example, in the US, Toyota created the Scion car as an exclusive niche brand with billboards proclaiming "So wrong for so many." If you're a curator, you shop in Urban Outfitters, Corso Como in Milan and Anthropologie on the US east coast. The Irish version of this is Avoca, which offers the clothes to wear while serving Avoca food on Avoca dishes before retiring to bed with books conveniently placed by the Avoca till.
Blogging is another example of curating, though in this case it's about curating opinion, rather than possessions. Bloggers of like mind reassure each other that they're not just "on trend" with their opinions, but making the trends too by being influential. Blogging is an accessible way of expressing individuality in a muiltinational media world.
In an age in which information equals capital, we're seeing the creative class become the fastest-growing class in society - not middle, not upper but striving to go beyond both. These people may work for multinationals but as individuals, they value authenticity and self-expression. They don't buy, they invest in the products that speak to them emotionally. But they're not independent enough to let go of consumerism - they just want brands that give the illusion that they are.
Think about it next time you buy that stinking artisan cheese in the local farmer's market or choose an Irish shop rather than a multinational. Is it taste you're going for? Or is the real issue showing other people that you have taste? If your purchase is a statement, then welcome to the world of being a curator.