Catalog Joy

Sears-Roebuck mail-order catalog

You could understand the entirety of American life from the Sears-Roebuck catalog.

     ~ Yasuhiko Kobayashi

                    The Heibon Planning Center [1] team all grew up devouring discarded American mail-order catalogs—a medium they believed was the ultimate representation of life in the U.S. As Kobayashi [2] explains it, “You could understand the entirety of American life from the Sears-Roebuck catalog.” They imagined American families snuggled around the fireplace, flipping through the pages and dreaming of a better life. Since Japan lacked a culture of mail order, making such a catalog felt magical and foreign—like Americans producing a book of ukiyo-e woodblock prints...

                    Made in U.S.A. [3] arrived in bookstores in June 1975 with its cover displaying a pair of button-fly Levi’s 501s, a hammer, a wood burning stove, an acoustic guitar, a Red Wing work boot, and a colonial-style chest of drawers...

Americans use the terms “catalog joy” and “catalog freak” for people who like to look at and collect well-known catalogs.

     ~ Made in U.S.A.

W. David Marx

“Cataloguing America”

in Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style

Notes:

1. Publisher of men's fashion magazine Heibon Punch
2. Yasuhiko Kobayashi was illustrator for Heibon Punch
3. Japanese catalog magazine of American brands; the quote is from the introduction