Clothing with a Story

Today's fashion is pretty decent. It's classy and doesn't involve shoulder pads. Most notably, the good stuff hearkens back to the 1950s and '60s, when fashion entered the modern age, but retained some elegance.

Someone from my mom's work sent me a small clothing catalogue - and I recently rediscovered the website - for a fantastic company that is bringing the classic fashions back, exactly as they were.

The J. Peterman Company is found at www.JPeterman.com. All of the images are illustrated, which is lovely, but makes it a little difficult to envision in person. But check this out:

The product descriptions alone make the website worth visiting. EACH page tells a story. This is for the "Russian Navy Shirt":

"Wait a minute. Does Russia really have a navy?

They do. Of course they do.

Watch the news on TV tonight. If they're wearing striped shirts like this, it's the Russian Navy.

Unless you see a dark-eyed girl paddling a green boat and her boyfriend laughs and smokes and laughs and his cigarette is slightly less than one inch long and permanently attached and he is wearing a not bad-looking striped navy shirt, then it's France.

Unless it's New York.

But if the girl and her boyfriend are both blonde, and pale smoky-eyed, and he, you notice, is deeply tanned and wearing a striped navy shirt, then it's Finland.

...

Under a suit jacket, it's L.A. Or maybe Munich.

...

Unless it's Central Park."

If any of the product description stories are true, then many of the fashions - and fragrances - are based on real designs from back in the day.

If not, then you've still just read the best fashion writing available.

And there's even more classy old stuff: men's clothing, collections of luggage, antique kitchenware, old English pub signs, etc.

This is a site I'll be saving for.