The middle class lowers the blinds in France

There are names, brands, places that shine and fascinate until, without knowing how or why, one day they begin to seem gray and the next no one remembers them.

Activist and writer Cory Doctorow has invented the word “

enshittification

.”

Literally, this term refers to the process by which something turns into shit.

Doctorow, with this crude expression, refers to the slow decline of digital platforms like Facebook.

He could be talking about the crisis of the French clothing chains that flourished in the eighties and nineties of the last century, and that over time lost their luster.

Some were the coolest

,

the coolest.

The names of Naf-Naf, Kookaï, Camaïeu, Pimkie and others were part of the landscape of the streets of cities, large and small (the beautiful France, the postcard one), and of the shopping centers on the outskirts (the one known as ugly France).

Years passed, and competition from cheaper brands and chains such as the Spanish Zara, changes in consumer habits and, finally, the covid pandemic and the inflationary spiral, sentenced them.

Some were dragged into suspension of payments.

Or they have had to close dozens of stores.

It is a crisis—that of the French chains that clothed the middle classes in the final stage of the golden era of the middle class in the West—that explains a fundamental social change.

In 2023 alone, nearly 4,000 people will be unemployed in the textile sector, according to the latest report from the Alliance du Commerce, a professional organization for this industry in France.

In four years, almost one in five customers has defected.

“

Kookaïette

… The new breed of chic and penniless young girls,” said a television report from the late eighties about what was then the Kookaï phenomenon.

The

kookaïettes

were the girls who dressed in Kookaï clothes.

The video, taken from the extensive archive of the National Audiovisual Institute, seems from the perspective of 2024 to be a nostalgic lament for a world that will no longer return.

A

kookaïette

declares in the report: “The 40-year-old woman who needs a sweater to wear under a jacket, even from Chanel or Saint Laurent, will come here to find it, just like the 16-year-old girl who is looking for a T-shirt or sweater. To go out at night".

Generational relief

Those

kookaïettes

are now over fifty and their daughters and sons no longer dress in Kookaï, which last autumn was acquired by the French group Antonelle-Un jour ailleurs, nor in other brands such as Camaïeu, which has been in judicial liquidation since last month. September.

They buy, young and old, online, or second-hand clothes, in multinationals such as Primark, H&M or Zara, or in cheap chains such as Action or Zeeman.

The native

ready-to-wear

, of medium size, of medium prices and for the middle class, has had a hard time resisting the new times.

In reality, the crisis reflects a broader phenomenon that feeds the recurring French neurosis about eternal decline.

This is what Jérôme Fourquet and Jean-Laurent Cassely call, in the essay

La France sous nos yeux

, “the end of the common home” or “dismediation.”

That is, the erosion and disintegration of the French middle class.

Some fall and others rise, and what was a more or less compact block fragments into disparate ways of life.

On the one hand, an upper-middle class that opts for more expensive and distinctive products (be it the

gourmet

hamburger or the electric SUV).

On the other, a lower-middle class that is losing its footing and consuming cheaper products (be it McDonald's and kebab, or the ubiquitous Dacia Duster automobile).

There are two versions of everything today: the

premium

and the

discount

.

And in the middle, a growing void.

Here you can consult the latest Letters from the correspondent

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