Critical Shopper: Now You See It ...

I CAN still remember the first pop-up book of my childhood: Hans Christian Andersens The Emperors New Clothes. The best part was the scene of the emperor striding down the town boulevard in what he believed to be his terrifically chic new outfit. You pulled the tab and the whole scene lifted majestically off the page, including the emperor, wearing nothing but his crown and socks fastened with pink garters, his nether regions modestly hidden away behind rolls of fat.

Instead of pop-up books, grown-ups now have pop-up stores, outlets that rise out of nowhere and teasingly stay open for a few weeks, then disappear. They are the retail equivalent of the blind date on which the pair decide only to meet for drinks, the tacit agreement being that if they like each other, they go on to dinner.

The dinner scenario usually ends badly because cocktails were consumed before dinner with no food, and things go way too far before the evening is over, and generally speaking, neither one calls the next day because each is too embarrassed about what happened the night before.

But pop-up stores are another story, a way for retailers to elegantly sip just that one cocktail with consumers before going all the way. Target once placed a pop-up store on a boat floating on the Hudson. A Nike pop-up store in SoHo, which was open for four days last month, had one purpose: to sell 250 pairs of special edition Nikes at $250 each. Some pop-ups cultivate the feeling of a private club. (Pop-up boutiques sponsored by the company Vacant are announced only to registered members.)

The upside for retailers is clear: they can offer the change and spontaneity offered by theater, restaurants and art galleries, and consumers build the buzz. And yet even pop-up stores have become victims of their own flash: we are so used to being ceaselessly entertained by ever-changing entities that pop-ups now must have a thing, a catch, a special feature that makes it even more buzz-worthy for the duration of its fruit-fly-short life.

Change, which offers clothes by the jeans manufacturer Seven for All Mankind and the womens clothier LaRok, is a stand-alone store, open from Nov. 27 through Dec. 10. Its magic dressing rooms and walls are the draw, and for the tech- and retail-minded, they alone are worth a visit.

IN the dressing rooms, instruments inside one warped-mirror wall project images on the opposite wall, which acts as a giant motion-sensitive video monitor. As you move through the space, the images change: scenes of a Louis Quatorze bedroom switch with those of bronze Barbie dolls; robots wandering across a checkerboard tableau alternate with mannequins swirling over a round pink satin bed; yapping metallic dogs switch places with white puppies; a portrait of a city in liquid gold light rises and falls.

This technology, developed by Freeset, is called Human Locator, and for retailers its uses stretch beyond the illusion of art: it encourages shoppers to move, to participate in a physical way with the environment, and as we know, physical activity releases endorphins, and endorphins make people happy, and happy people buy more things. Second, studies have shown repeatedly that shoppers who try on clothes are more likely to buy something, and you cant go into this store without going into the dressing room.

Third, when Human Locator is used on store walls, as in the Magic Mirror series on some of the Change walls — it surrounds the customer with bubbling blue dots that respond to gestures — the retailer can track a shoppers movements throughout the store. Sure, it looks like fun and games, but Big Bluejeans-Wearing Brother wants to see if youre stopping at the kimono tops or the reversible fur vests.

The notion of consumers participating unwittingly in market research is not new. What is new is that customers are not likely to understand that the snowflakes or dancing girls are providing information about them as they wriggle and boogie with the bobbing images. Human Locator is a security technology and an information gathering operation masquerading as innocent, jolly fun. In that sense, Human Locator is a bit creepier than, say, your average security camera.

That said, it is an eminently enjoyable way to shop, a triumphant blend of technology and psychology, seamlessly blending human narcissism with consumer habit. Im a modest dresser, and I left the store energized, carrying a dress I would never ever have thought of buying. Not in a grillion, bajillion years.

LaRok is a line of clothing generally made of drapey viscose jersey. The pieces tend to be things that can do double duty: Is it a dress or a top? Is it a shawl or a skirt? The item I bought ($148) consists of a bra top with gold chain straps, the cups of which together would not take up the space of a Kleenex (folded in half), and a tunic that grazes the upper thighs and slips off the shoulders.

At home I unwrapped the outfit, piteously, from its orange tissue paper, dreaming the dream of the empress with new clothes, who had none.

Change

62 Greene Street (between Spring and Broome Streets); (212) 334-3456

ATMOSPHERE: Like being inside a giant womblike video game.

SERVICE Once staff members are caffeinated and have turned on the music, enthusiastic.

KEY LOOKS Expensive jeans (yawn), sexy womens dresses and tops in stretchy rayon and spandex jersey.

PRICES $132 and way on up for jeans; $398 for a reversible LaRok fur vest; $138 for a LaRok kimono tee.

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