1075 Catalog

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

The new Spiegel catalog has arrived, and I am pleased that they seem to have turned a corner.

Once upon a very long time ago I used to buy my office wear from Spiegel. They used to have some really nice stuff. I bought my favorite suit of all time from them, a pale turquoise linen-look, and another suit in rose and navy that for some reason got me first class treatment on business trips. The items were beautifully and carefully packed, and they even (back in those days) included a prepaid label for returns.

But somewhere between ten and fifteen years ago, they changed. Everything in the catalog looked like it was aimed toward streetwalkers and amateur sluts, or for cowgirls. (I'm not saying cowgirls are anywhere near streetwalking sluts - that just seemed to be the two separate groups they were courting, in two separate sections of the catalog.)

There was no way I was going to wear transparent tops, tight lycra dresses, belly button level plunge necklines, underwear as outerwear, broad-shouldered blouses covered with appliqued lace, or suits with peplum jackets to the office. Too much skin. Too much flash. Too much fluff. Yuck.

I don't think I've bought anything from them in a least a decade, but they have continued to send me a huge catalog several times a year anyway.

I guess they've finally fired that buyer. This issue is chock full of reasonable choices. We've got boob and belly coverage! The lycra is drapey! We've got a lot less lace and sequins. It almost looks like they've decided to go for the more mature, sophisticated, customer.

The only complaint I have is that the models are obviously out of proportion. The head length and total height should be a 1 to 7 ratio, and most of these models are 1 to 10. Their heads look tiny, and their legs look impossible. Most of the photos look like they were shot with the photographer lying on the floor, and even then the photos look like they were stretched.

I, at 4'10", can't imagine myself in those clothes. Not from those photos.

So I didn't buy anything (I don't need anything, either, but that never stopped me...), except that I had just the other day decided I need a full-length bodysuit for under a semi-sheer caftan, and some black tights for under a tunic, and lo, they had them in my size, so I ordered them.

-------------- Time has passed --------------

I got a phone call from a friend, the one with the ill parents, and we talked for over an hour. At the same time, there was a program on TV, one segment of which was going to be on hoarders. I taped it, and I just watched the beginning of that segment.

I have a lot of "stuff", which has built up into clutter. But I'm not a truehoarder, not like Jay was. The program mentioned that to a hoarder, throwing out anything is like tearing out a piece of their life. One woman mentioned that she's terrified that she might throw out something important. The program also said that hoarders tend to think of their hoards in three dimensions, that they know exactly where everything is. They don't catagorise things for sorting or storage, because to them, every item is unique.

(Heh heh. I guess that proves I'm not a hoarder. I still haven't found my winter shoes.)

Jay was like that. He knew exactly where everything was, even though there was nothing remotely resembling sorting, which blew my mind. It was true that he was terrified of throwing out something important. When I first moved in, I tried to clear out the stacks of paper in the den, and he actually got panicky, hyperventilating and all. We ended up buying a pair of 42 inch wide 2-drawer file cabinets to corral the mess.

He had subscriptions to about eight magazines, and never threw an issue out. Ever. There are still boxes of Smithsonians and Scientific Americans and others in the attic. I had attempted to clean out the basement, where there were boxes wall-to-wall and stacked to the ceiling down there, many of which had moved with him from Texas in the early 80s, and had not been opened since the move. We managed to get through one box when I realized this wasn't going to happen. The box we opened together had some badly-framed, faded and stained prints of Paris that his parents had bought on one of their trips, and had hung in his boyhood bedroom. Parents (deceased mother). Paris (dear to him). Boyhood bedroom. Hoo boy. Throwing out those prints was, to him, throwing all that out.

Every item had a memory attached, and it was as if throwing out the item was to excise, or at least devalue, the memory.

After he died, I tackled the basement. I found all his old college textbooks, all his high school and college class notes, several huge boxes full of unopened junk mail, boxes full of old ratty towels, bath mats, ugly knickknacks, all the detritus of thirty years of never throwing anything out. I filled two construction dumpsters, and that's only about half the stuff yet to go.

The TV program (pardon me if I don't look up what it was, I don't have a TV guide, and it's gone now so who cares) put some hoarders through an MRI while they showed a hoarded object and asked whether it should be kept or pitched, and they found that "a war went on" in their brains. A large number of connections involved in the decision.

I have to rewatch that first bit, and then the rest.

But right now there's a piece about the lost boys of the Sudan on Nightline, so pardon me while I go watch that. They're in my will (if Daughter predeceases me), along with several other charities. I suppose I ought to check whether it's still an operating charity. The boys have a fascinating story. Anyway, gotta watch that now.
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