Curated Texan
It seemed like a world far, far away came to the mailbox during the holiday season, with glamorous offerings of catalogs were the norm and also proved to be inspirational. Our very own cultural ambassador, Gordon Kendall fondly recalls them in this exclusive look at luxury gift shopping.
I WISH I COULD HAVE THAT
The chic world on the coasts would remain a dream until I loved there as a young man to discover it for myself. Until then, there was the holiday catalog, which beckoned me from afar to aspire to dream about a life beyond my ho-hum eighth-grade existence. To understand the Christmas catalogs I grew up with, you have to know something about the stores offering them. From the smallest hamlet to the largest in Manhattan, there were scores of local, regional, and specialty stores. These retailers worked with local groups and held store events where they learned what people would and would not want to wear. Around the house, to school, work, play, and holiday parties, these stores had you covered because they knew you. They had merchandise teams of buyers, not Excel programs, and programmed orders, determined their shoppers would like because they knew those shoppers, often personally.
The three-hundred-dollar dress would fly off the racks, but the five-hundred-dollar one wouldn’t, because the buyers knew first-hand how to gauge demand. Red would sell better than green; solid ties, not printed cravats. The success of these stores relied on them being part and parcel of their respective communities. So, when the stores put out Christmas catalogs, they were putting their best foot forward with the best, most edited selection of goods they could create. Yes, they were the original influencers.
Some stores really got it right. Their taste caught on. Everywhere. Maybe they had a special product niche, like New York’s (original) Abercrombie & Fitch with sporting goods, or FAO Schwarz with inimitable toys. Maybe they had a particular point of view found nowhere else, like San Francisco’s sublime and now-resurrected Gump’s. Texas’ own Neiman Marcus offered as much humor as high fashion with items like Chinese trunks and designer cocktail dresses. Whatever snobbishness, there might have been was tempered by the very real understanding that people like to have a good laugh. Although, as I think about it, that Lucite “N-bar-M” mouse ranch that Neiman’s touted was even funny to a kid like me. The point is, that seeking out these special catalogs was part of the fun of holiday shopping. Something about them gave you confidence to buy…as you could…from them.
Magazines figured out the cachet of these special catalogs and how to partner with them. Remember those cards at the back all your favorite, glossy lifestyle and fashion monthlies? Just fill them out, pay the fees and within some time store catalogs from all over the U.S. would come to you. Thanks to this service, I was able to see what it would be like, and what it would cost to outfit myself, in New York’s A. Sulka & Co., silk robes, or wear the latest in Italian menswear from Wilkes-Bashford in San Francisco. Amen-Wardy in Newport Beach, California took care of haute couture dressing for the ladies. It was the kind of catalog where anyone would feel more affluent, just leafing through it. Additionally, Tiffany & Co.’s little blue catalog with full-color photographs boasted both twenty-carat diamonds and sterling silver centerpiece Christmas trees. It was a far cry from the catalogs most stores distribute now since those were printed in Switzerland and cost five-dollars. In the 1970s. Talk about luxury. They remain collectible glimpses into yesterday.
EXPERIENCE BY MAIL
Now, though, the stores are long gone or may soon pivot in response to modern shopping habits. Community has become a virtual concept, much less a local reality, and luxury has been redefined to mean experiences and friends you pay for, not things you keep because you cherish them. The excitement of waiting for, and receiving, a catalog from a store as far away as London means much less when that same store pushes its wares all the time, right there, on your computer. So, being part of some far-flung exercise group that only meets on your phone just seems more exciting to some.
Prices of gifts have polarized, too. Expensive now means really expensive, and low-cost means cheap in every sense of the word. When Stanley Marcus elevated the holiday catalog in the 1950s and 1960s, even there were one-of-a-kind gifts, there was also a robust and unique selection of gifts under $25. Now, there is no middle ground when it comes to profit margins, and we, the consumer has spoken: lower prices unless we’re really going to splash out and, furthermore, who really cares about quality when we’re likely not to keep it for very long, anyway? Maybe what has really happened is that our dreams have changed.
Now, being well dressed, male or female, seems only a worthy goal for as many likes, followers, and tweets that one can garner from complete strangers. It doesn’t seem to be about how you might feel and how you’d like to define yourself personally. They, the hypesters on social media, who always have something new to be afraid to miss out on (defined as FOMO––fear of missing out), have come to shape our aspirations, not the stores that at least knew us and offered their pride of place catalogs to show us how much they did. No, those made you wait too long to even get the catalogs, much less the merchandise. But at least, with them, you made the selection and had the confidence of the stores to give you confidence that, Hey! You got this!
Rockin’ the Christmas stockin’ these days is an experience unto itself. I hold out hope that some new stores will come on the scene, will last, and find a way into our hearts. These should be venues that come to know us as the people we are, not the algorithms they tell us to buy, and that, moreover, really take modern-day branding’s elusive mantra of authenticity to heart…and revive the glory of the printed and mailed Christmas catalog that offers one-of-a-kind items I can’t find anywhere else. I’ll be looking for it in my mailbox again, won’t you?
