"When I was young, all my clothes had to be branded," says 16-year-old Sophie.
"Now, it's [about] what it looks like."
It's just after noon on Saturday and Sophie Brown is shopping with her 15-year-old friend, Pat Utenpattanun, in Dunedin's Meridian Mall.
We're in one of those stores that appears to be a jumble of jeans, hoodies and sunglasses but is actually a teenage nirvana. A pricey one.
Sophie once bought a bikini here for $80 and jeans are "like $170". But that's only because they are a certain brand, she explains.
"You can get any skinny jean for $70 and they look exactly the same."
"But they do have more colours here ..." says Pat, glancing at the various washes and summing up their dilemma.
Outside the store, other teenage girls wander the corridors three abreast, stopping briefly to greet friends with hugs or to text on their cellphones. Someone in a gorilla suit strolls beside a girl in a pink T-shirt that shouts, "I love nerds". Any seats have been taken by middle-aged men patiently waiting for wives and daughters.
In terms of convenience, the roof is the most obvious thing in a mall's favour. Inside, you're sheltered from rain and the temperature is constant at about 21 degrees. Drive into one of the many parking spaces and you can reach dozens of shops, all within comfortable walking distance.
There are no intersections or exhaust fumes. There is always a security guard, a coffee or a toilet when you need one.
But malls these days are as much about getting together with friends as about convenience. And in the advertising line, "Meet me at the Meridian", shopping doesn't even get a mention.
For adolescents, part of the attraction is to see and be seen. They hang out in the food court, observe what other teens are wearing and enjoy their first whiff of independence.
Older shoppers spend their leisure time here, too, and developers are doing their best to meet demand.
Next weekend, Wall Street officially opens. In the next few months there will be a multi-million-dollar refurbishment of the Golden Centre as it attempts to capitalise on being at the centre of 2ha of covered retail and office space.
Meridian manager Michael Porter is only half joking when he suggests that for some people, shopping has become not just a leisure activity but an Olympic sport.
"It's a generational thing," he says. "As generation Y matures and their disposable income increases, it will probably be treated more as a recreation.
"It's fantastic for business."
Dr Lisa McNeill, a senior lecturer in marketing at the University of Otago, says the notion of shopping as entertainment goes hand in hand with a rise in consumerism and easy access to credit.
"It's seen as quite normal to spend your Saturday that way. You go in the school holidays and look at the Meridian Mall and there are whole families just wandering the mall - small children being dragged from shop to shop, people going for a meal as a family. It's a day out for them."
A study she and honours student Sarah Penman did among university students in 2007 showed that though they did not necessarily have something in mind that they wanted to buy, making a purchase gave them the "full entertainment experience".
The students likened wandering around the mall to going to the pub or a movie, and knew they could fill in an entire day with breaks for a meal or coffee.
The young consumers studied showed a relaxed attitude to debt and consumer purchasing, with an emphasis on self-reward and instant gratification.
There were no major differences between the responses of males and females.
But wandering the main street was not seen in the same way, Dr McNeill says. If the students were there, they were more likely to be going to a specific shop.
It's true that we seem willing to invest more time at the mall, and those centres have come up with a variety of ways to keep us longer. In New Zealand, these include restaurants and movie theatres but overseas, the biggest malls boast ice-skating rinks, aquariums, indoor wave pools, roller coasters, bowling lanes and wedding chapels. They have even given rise to a new form of seniors exercise called mall-walking.
But whatever entertainment they provide, most malls follow a fashion-and-food-court formula, with anchor stores generally being a supermarket, a general merchandiser such as Kmart or a department store like Farmers.
And Dr John Guthrie, also a senior lecturer in marketing, says it is no accident that the biggest single category is women's apparel.
"Eighty percent of all retail shopping is female, including females buying for their partners. The metrosexual thing might change that a few percentage points, but the bottom line is it's a girl thing."
Dr Guthrie recalls being "dragged" around an American mall by female relatives last year when he spotted an area with La-Z-boy chairs and a bar.
"You could park your husband there and for $10, he got a beer, peanuts and whatever sports channel he wanted to watch."
Dr McNeill says developers refer to these areas as "boyfriend parking lots" and know women will spend more time shopping if their partner is not hovering nearby tapping their feet and constantly looking at their watches.
In his book, Call of the Mall, American "retail anthropologist" Paco Underhill describes the mall as a "big, air-conditioned vanilla box with all the action on the inside".
He argues that many malls are ugly and featureless because they were built not by retailers but by real estate companies intent on putting space to work, not aesthetic value.
And inside? "The monotony of the storefront line allows you to walk in a kind of ambulatory trance - you're passing one sheer, absolutely flat wall of glass after another."
Underhill even found that people walk differently in malls. On a city street, men walk faster than women but in a mall, the roles are reversed: "Men tend to wander malls like semi-lost children whereas women are the ones who inhabit the place with a true shopper's sense of purpose".
Dr McNeill says there are some benefits to be had in familiarity - being able to walk into any mall knowing there is likely to be a food court on the bottom floor and toilets off to the side. And because tenants change from time to time, developers have to design spaces most retail stores will fit into.
But the homogenous mix offered by malls can also lead to boredom. In the US, there is a feeling that malls have reached stauration point. On the website deadmalls.com, enthusiasts photograph abandoned American malls. And a recent Newsweek article declared that the American mall, if not already buried, was in its death throes.
Newsweek quoted "new urbanism" expert Ellen Dunham-Jones, who said that nearly a fifth of the country's 2000 largest retail malls are failing. Ms Dunham-Jones said 2007 was the first year in half a century that a new indoor mall didn't open somewhere in the US - a "precipitous decline" since the mid-1990s when they rose at a rate of 140 a year.
That curtailment - put down to the repopulation of cities, suburban gang problems, the current economic recession and people having less time to shop - has forced malls to rebrand themselves. And in doing so, they have finally begun to fulfill their inventor's dream.
The father of the modern shopping mall was the Austrian-born architect, Victor Gruen. When Germany invaded Austria in 1938, Gruen emigrated to the United States. After the war, he designed the country's first suburban open-air shopping mall and two years later, in 1956, he followed up with the first enclosed mall in Edina, Minnesota.
Mr Gruen imagined the mall as the centre of a fully-fledged community but the apartments, schools, parks and medical facilities he planned were never built.
Only now are US developers including mixed uses to make malls more like communities.
While many jaded malls have been refurbished, others are being reborn as "lifestyle centres" that mimic city streets. Like traditional malls, they provide convenient parking separate from pedestrian areas. Unlike malls, they blend outdoor plazas and footpath tables with apartments, offices and smaller, individually-styled shops.
But lifestyle centres - typically built near affluent suburbs - have also been criticised as tarted-up, phoney streetscapes that shield Americans from the messiness of public life, including teenage "mall rats".
While New Zealand malls may have some of the same problems as their American counterparts - Christchurch plans to disperse teen loiterers by playing Barry Manilow - they could hardly be said to have reached saturation point.
And Dr Guthrie says it is only in the past five years that New Zealand malls have become tired and owners like Westfield have needed to pump in more money to make them attractive.
The Meridian's Michael Porter admits that with every square inch devoted to retailing, little can be done once a centre is built to "greatly modify" its aesthetic appeal. But he says many visitors praise the Meridian as not a typical mall that is "Gib-lined, cream on cream and thrown together as quickly as possible".
While some wonder if Dunedin is big enough to sustain a second big mall, like Wall Street, Lisa McNeill says the New Zealand consumer is now demanding more and spending more on discretionary items.
Porter says Wall Street dilutes the pool of available tenants but its retailers seem to be complementary rather than in direct competition to most in the Meridian and anything that brings more people to the "golden block" between Hanover and Fredericks streets is good.
The Meridian's turnover has never been higher and individually, most retailers are experiencing month-on-month growth exceeding that of the consumer price index.
When the mall opened, its tenancy mix was relatively mature and conservative, reflecting Dunedin's demographic profile, Mr Porter adds.
But research that showed it was underachieving in certain markets led to it introducing stores like Amazon, Supre and Diva with a stronger youth focus.
Wall Street will also have to think carefully about its mix of stores, McNeill says: "When it first opens, it will be like anything that is new - it's great. But after a while, that newness wears off and people will question if they are appropriate stores for Dunedin."
Both she and Dr Guthrie feel the city's main-street strip-shopping is worth retaining.
The fact Dunedin's mall is in the middle of that street is a good point of difference, Dr Guthrie says.
"I'm a fan of a vibrant city centre. Christchurch allowed malls in its suburbs and regretted it for years because the centre city with its beautiful cathedral became a bad area of town."
And he doubts if online shopping can replace a physical environment like a mall for most people: "We're very social - human beings - and we like to go places like that and enjoy the experience."
If the mall has had its heyday elsewhere, you wouldn't know it listening to teens like Sophie and Pat, who each spend upwards of $100 a month on items like tops, jeans and jewellery.
Not every store in the mall appeals: "My mum shops there so I wouldn't really go there of my own will," says Sophie, pointing out a boutique she says is for the "older, working woman".
But there is enough to encourage her to return two or three times a week.
On Saturdays, she comes to shop but after school, it is to eat with friends at McDonald's, then hang out at the mall.
"We walk around the Meridian, see things we like and wish we had enough money to buy them."The malls
Meridian Mall
• Cost $35 million to build.
• Opened in September 1997.
• Was developed by Arthur Barnett Properties, which onsold the mall to ING Australia (also the owner of the Dressmart chain) in 2003 for $53 million.
• Has 46 tenants, or stores, employing about 500 people.
• Is closed only four days a year (Kmart closes on three).
• Employs three people to run the mall, with other work performed by contractors. This includes about 30 cleaners, security guards and carpark attendants.
Wall Street
• Will be officially opened on Saturday, March 21.
• Was developed by the Dunedin City Council at a cost of $34 million.
• Is on the former Deka site in George St.
• Will have 18 retail tenants, along with offices and carparks.
• Takes its name from a stone wall within the building which provides structural support as well as solar heating and cooling.
• Will feature images of the former Dunedin Stock Exchange on a glass facade, and a display of preserved logs from an 1850s causeway.
• Will be linked to the locally-owned Golden Centre, which has 22 tenants and is about to undergo a multimillion-dollar refurbishment.
