I wasn’t at an Aesop boutique in Brooklyn to visit the $17 toothpaste—I was there to visit the $39 hand soap. I say “visit,” because the other ways to describe going into a store to look at a product ...

“They have your special toothpaste at Ricky’s,” a friend texted me recently, and though she couldn’t have known it, my heart stopped. It’s true that I’ve been tweeting maniacally about the toothpaste ...