Shoppers are increasingly finding guidance in magazines that focus on what to buy

Remember simplicity?

Here's a hint: It was the buzzword after 9/11.

The shock of the terrorist attacks, you may recall, had the temporary effect of sending us scurrying back to the basics.

Americans were throwing away their cellphones, reconnecting with their values, rethinking spending patterns that were adding stress to their lives.

It seems they've been doing some more rethinking.

Consumer spending, evidently, is alive and well and being abetted by a flourishing genre of magazines that celebrate the act, and the product, of shopping. These ''shopping magazines" or ''magalogs,"include Lucky, Cargo, Shop Etc., and the snappy new Domino. (A close cousin, Cookie, comes out in the fall and is targeted to upscale parents who ''want to explore the best new choices in everything," Fairchild Publications recently announced.) These are magazines that minimize extraneous subject matter like articles and go right to the stuff, in the guise of ''fabulous finds" ''must have" devices, a ''guide to splurging," and detailed information about how to buy it all.

Narratives tend to be kept to a minimum. For example, the premiere issue of Conde Naste's month-old Domino -- billed as ''The Shopping Magazine For Your Home" -- has a page of ''fabulous" door knockers with girlfriend-y annotations (''weird and fabulous!"; ''like a satin black brooch for your door") and abbreviated tips on how to hang them. ''We are trying to demystify decorating and help people figure out their own style," says Deborah Needleman, Domino's editor-in-chief.

''The most distinctive thing about them is they make no apologies for what they are doing, in terms of saying ''shopping is good, buying is good, we are going to show you the products, and the only thing we'll tell you is which one is best for you," says Samir Husni, chairman of the University of Mississippi journalism department and author of an annual guide to new magazines.

One thing they seem to share is an assumption that material goods in our lives give us style, panache, and pleasure as long as they are properly ''edited," and ''smart," to use lingo almost universally employed by their editors. So why defer pleasure?

''What I want NOW!" is a headline in this month's ''Lucky," published by Condé Nast and subtitled ''The Magazine About Shopping." (Apparently we want a $295 tote bag that works for the office and beach; and a $68 silk camisole.)

This month's Cargo --a shopping magazine for men, also from Condé Nast --offers a similarly inclined feature: ''The Nine Things We're Wanting Right Now." (Males urgently desire a $249 On-Key Karaoke VideoMaker, an i.Tech virtual keyboard, and a $3,498 acoustic-electric guitar.)

In a country that has a market for everything from baby wipe warmers to decorative toilet bowl handle covers, it's not surprising that magazines would see a niche for themselves as shopping guides.

''The market is so vast that [we felt] a magazine that had a stylish edit of products would be a nice service," Needleman says.

''There is more information out there that it's possible to get your hands on and read," says Pilar Guzman, editor-in-chief of Cookie, scheduled to launch in November. ''We want this to be a very smart distillation of stuff out there that gives practical advice for how to deal with it."

Where Cargo showcases men's gear, Lucky features fashion, and while Shop Etc. is a potpourri, Cookie and Domino are targeting the next generation of decorators who evidently shop for their homes with the same zeal they shop for their clothes. ''Domino is not your mother's home magazine," Condé Nast emphasized when it launched the publication. Editors say one of the hallmarks of this generation is that it has limited time to shop but a definite craving for style (and not much confidence in its ability to pull it off, which is why it looks to magazines for guidance).

''This is a group of people who have spent their money on clothes and know how to dress, but get stuck on how to extend their style into a three-dimensional space," says Needleman. ''In the house I grew up in, my mother went to the department store and bought a suite of furniture and it stayed there for 20 years, and then she did it again. We don't live like that. Because of magazines like Martha [Stewart Living], there has been this democratization of taste. You care about what your sofa looks like, you care about what your toilet paper holder looks like, or your salt shakers."

''We are curating a certain lifestyle," says Guzman. ''The idea is: Here is a very well-edited selection of toys for various age groups. Here are clothes that reflect the more sophisticated sensibility of people having kids later, with developed careers. . . . We bring a style filter that is also very smart and informed."

This filter may be smart, but it's also problematic, said Jack Gillis, a spokesman for the Consumer Federation of America. ''We're desperate for advice and suggestions and these magazines and their associated websites often have useful information," he says. ''However, the line is so blurred it's sometimes very difficult to tell if you are getting good advice or if it's advertiser supported."

Needleman has heard this argument before. ''This is a misconception of shopping magazines," she contends. ''We have no more incentive to show the product of one of our advertisers than a traditional magazine. It's not like we are getting kickbacks."

Husni acknowledges the line-blurring ''down side" of these publications but sees them as a useful, inevitable byproduct of a time-starved American lifestyle. ''We are bombarded by stuff, and they are the gatekeepers. I see it as a big service," he says.

Like it or not, he says, the magazines reflect the American psyche. Also that ''we are not a nation of savers," he says. And that ''consumers have no brand loyalty anymore: The life cycle of stuff is getting shorter and shorter and shorter."

He adds: ''We have taken the guilt out of shopping; I think that's happened to us since Sept. 11. The message that got out was 'life is too short, let me live my life to the fullest,' and these magazines are telling you, 'we will show you how.'"

''It's all about yearning and desire," says James Twitchell, author of ''Living It Up: America's Love Affair With Luxury" (2002) and a professor of English and advertising at the University of Florida. ''We used to know who we were by what religion we were or how many vowels in our name or how many years we lived in Boston. We lost our faith in those, and now we make sophisticated judgments about ourselves and each other by what we are consuming. These magazines cut through all the unnecessary clutter to get down to the objects themselves."

Of course this wouldn't be America if there weren't dissent, and this comes in the form of ''Rescue," an anti-shopping magazine based in Portland, Maine.

A recent issue highlights a woman whose bedroom has dented furniture and mismatched comforters, tells how to make cheap picture frames out of recycled materials, and recommends five ''get-over-yourself" essentials, including a ziplock bag for holding toiletries.

''Our message is ditch the diva, ditch the experts. Style really comes from within," says Rescue's founder and publisher Dan Ho. A former restaurateur in Chicago who used to lead a ''magazine cover existence" -- ''We had a vase for every flower, a placemat and napkin for every theme" -- he began to reevaluate his life after an illness in 1998. We had six sofas and no kids. Every bedroom had to have, I am loath to admit it, a sitting area," says Ho.

''These days I am, like, what is a sitting area? Can't you sit elsewhere? And if you are looking to remember your spirit in the bathroom, what the hell are you doing lighting beeswax candles on the edge of your tub? I'm sorry, but serenity ain't no $40 candle."

Ho started the magazine three years ago as an antidote to ''this pursuit of lifestyle perfection. My philosophy is that your spirit is style, not this broad brushstroke prescription to have a list of 10 must-dos and get a makeover so you essentially look like everyone else. My position is that unless it's on the inside, it really won't be on the outside."