One of my last freelance projects is proofing a catalog for an upscale retailer, cross-checking SKUs and dimensions. My shallowest first thought is that it blows my mind people can spend multiple thousands of dollars on a dining room set. But of course the people who do so usually have much better-looking dining rooms than I do and have people over more often. We have only ever hosted one person in our place who wasn't blood-related to us, aside from workmen and representatives of the management company. A couple guys came in to fix the windows one time (we hadn't complained, I don't care if I have to prop a window open with a board) and I was shambling behind them in my robe apologizing for the mound of crap in front of one window. "Don't worry," one of the men said, "we live like this."



But the deeper thought, the thought that makes this proofing work compelling in the least, and it's not that deep, is how important and wonderful catalogs are. I can picture two or three clothing catalogs, like the very first Tweeds catalog, or the Esprit catalogs from the early 1980s, that I wore out from reading and re-reading. They'd end up in the bathroom all curled up and I'd still read them when I was in there. Before that I remember the Lillian Vernon catalogs at Grandma's, the Horchow Collection and L.L. Bean, worlds of stuff described. That's the key, that there's an image and a description and you assemble the two. Not to quote Roland Barthes but his book "The Fashion System" talks about this, the idea that there is the "thing-pictured" and the "thing-described" and together they make this image that's more or less artificial when compared with actual things. As we found out when we got our first box from Tweeds and it was just...clothes. But these clothes maintained a totemic importance that caused me to keep one platter-collared blouse, barely worn, for five years. I always pictured the seaside scene with blowing skirt and straw hat that made me buy the platter-collared blouse.



Once I went to the museum with a friend and realized he did the same thing as me: reading the wall labels for longer than you look at the art.