The J. Peterman Owner's Manual

Why, just the other day, I was wondering out loud whether the J. Peterman catalog still existed. You know J. Peterman. The duster that looks totally stud-sexy on exactly 0.01 percent of the guys who put it on. The short-short story write-ups that accompany every item for sale, those little literary slice-of-someone-else’s life bits designed to convince us that buying some whatever or the other makes us look like we’re wealthy, cool, and jet-setty. All those pricey and precious items tapping into our pathetic desires to be someone else and live somewhere else. And sometime other, while we're at it.

I never bought anything from the catalog, but I will confess that I used to pore over it, wondering whether, if I bought that cotton shirt I'd look like Jackie O and Lee Radziwill buzzing around the Riviera in a speedboat, circa 1969. (Answer: NO. Of course.)

I hadn't seen the catalog in years. And then, there it was in the basket where folks pitch their recycle. The person it was addressed to gets every catalog known to woman, and receives an average of a dozen packages a week. Apparently, she wasn't interested in what the reincarnation of J. Peterman has to offer.

But I was.

The duster, you will be relieved to know, is still there (for $379). And it's there, by god, because "they don't make Duesenbergs anymore." (Well, they do make scale models that cost even more than the duster, but there's no comparison. Between the scale model and the Gary Cooper Duesenberg that was supposed to fetch $10M at auction last summer; between the scale model and the duster; and between the duster and the Gary Cooper Duesenberg. Got that?

Forget the duster. For a lot less ($59) you can get yourself a striped fisherman's jersey that Picasso might have worn when he was "reinventing the art of ceramics." Or - unmentioned - treating women like crap.

Then there's the calf-length shirtwaist dress, in navy or multi-color striped print. Sigh.

Instead of fretting over what you should be wearing, J. Peterman has a few suggestions for what to do with time not spent fretting, Because you went ahead and got that dress:

Read two more pages of Zafon, [Editorial aside: who? I supposed Lee Radziwill would know who.] Confirm the Nantucket house for two weeks in August. Dash off a few lines to aunt Charlotte. Memorize Sonnet 116. Open the Barolo. Gather an armful of peonies from their reckless party along the stone wall.

Now I'm all for gathering peonies from their reckless party. Not to mention opening the Barolo. But much as I lust after this dress - only $138 - I'm pretty sure it's not going to make me look like I'm all of a sudden 3 inches taller and 30 pounds lighter.  Which is exactly the fleeting little fantasy that pops into mind when you look at any of the clothing items in the catalog. And if I'm experiencing this fleeting little fantasy, I'm pretty sure that the other women reading the copy are, too. 

And speaking of Jackie and Lee, there's a nifty shirt - the Swan Pond - that asks you to:

...remember the scene. High noon at La Cote Basque, circa 1960. Red leather banquettes. Bright seacoast murals and bouquets.....Babe Paley...Gloria Guinness. C.Z. Guest. Slim Keith. Jackie and Lee.

Although in 1960, the only restaurant I'd been in besides Friendly's was the Fox Lounge, where my family had our annual dining-out experience - steak sandwiches and salads - I did eat a number of times at La Cote. Not that I would have recognized anyone on the list other than Jackie, but we did see, on occasion, sort of famous people, including half the cast of the soap opera All My Children. 

And so it goes...wide leg pants - how contra - that will make you look leggier and lankier, like they did for Harlow. The dress that you wear to "cross the lobby of the St. Regis and disappear into an elevator." Now as it happens, I stayed a few times, while on business, at the St. Regis, and it's not all that fabulous. The most interesting thing there is the Maxfield Parrish artwork in the King Cole Bar. And speaking of disappearing into an elevator. One time at the St. Regis, I got off the elevator, put my key in the door, stepped into my room just as a naked man (who was not my husband) was stepping out of the shower. 

For the fellows, there's a Swedish Military Shirt, just like the ones Torbjorn and Nils, Swedish volunteers, wore in 1940 in South Finland, when they were helping the Finns fend off the Red Army. And when in their downtime they "often talked about spending next summer at their uncle's marina in Goteborg...crewing the family schooner."

And so it goes. Clothing to invoke the East Village, Malta, Sardinia, the Seychelles. 10 Downing Street. Clothing that coulda/woulda/shoulda been worn by Jean Paul Sartre and Tyrone Power.  Gertrude Stein and Jack Kerouac. (What, no Kate Hepburn? That would be way too easy. But Gertrude Stein? Come on. I want to look like Gertrude Stein, said no one ever.)

Overall, it's J. Peterman as Walter Mitty, as Zelig. 

Which is not to say I don't lust after a lot of the clothing in here, even though I know that IRL I would look ridiculous in it.

I saw on Wikipedia that the eponymous J. Peterman, discoverer and popularizer of the duster, graduated from Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts. Where I can pretty much guarantee that his aesthetic was not forged.