Curated shopping is apparently a hot retail trend — these are shops whose merchandise and decor are “curated” by someone with keen aesthetic sense. There needn’t be anything linking the wares except for the sensibility they tickle:
Curated shopping–the concept of offering a selection of products as carefully edited as a museum collection–has become a retail buzzword in recent years (see “Shopping Etc.,” March 2005). Colette, in Paris, and Moss, in New York, helped pioneer the concept, and both still set the standard for others. Now every major North American city seems to have at least one independently owned store with a decidedly unique approach to shopping. When it comes to furnishing interiors, these shop-owners-turned-lifestyle-curators assemble a contemporary mix of art, design, and craft that is exuberantly decorative and conceptual, even ironic. Unlike the pop-up retail trend–low-maintenance stores that appear temporarily in urban areas–boutiques that mix local and global designs are in it for the long haul, acting as incubators for lesser-known talents with bright futures.
(via Beyond the Beyond)