Reticulated Retailing

And here, courtesy of the newly opened Prada The Iconoclasts boutique in Paris, is my worst nightmare. A display teeming with snakes, the need to rummage through them to get to a destination, in this case the cash register, new clutch in hand.

(Oddly, I'm not afraid of snakes during waking hours. But at night, all those Indiana Jones set pieces start to brew in the brain, and it's a carpet of vipers to get through before dawn.)

I've got a notion about this. Airport duty-free boutiques have proliferated and profited hugely until the recent downturn. It's due to many factors. One is the captive audience, but also in play is the fragile psychological state of the soon-to-be-flier. "What the hell," the thinking goes. "The plane might go down. And I really deserve that £700 bag. I'll take it."

It's hard to replicate that subliminal-panic-driven luxury-goods acquisition away from the smell of jet fuel . . . unless another element of danger comes in. Snakes in the Boutique! It'd make an amazing movie . . .

(photo from Wallpaper)