The Chain Store ChallengeThe first indication of this was in the United States, during the 1980s.
Industrial analysts suggest that the introduction of zip codes and toll-free
telephone numbers, increasing subscription to credit cards and the develop-
ment of computer networks that could cross-check individual spending habits,
enabled the meteoric rise of mail order. Mail order business grew at three
times the rate of store business throughout the decade and according to the
Direct Marketing Association, in 1993 alone, in the United States, more than
10,000 mail order companies issued 13.5 billion catalogues and 55 per cent
of the adult population bought $51.5 billion worth of goods by mail.
Moreover, as Matthew De Bord noted in his essay on the J. Crew pheno-
menon ‘mail order used to mean dowdy, as in Sears-Roebuck stylessness and
industrial-strength presentation. It now means reliably stylish. It used to mean
cheap; it now competes with the pricier designers for customers’.^15 The real
impact of the mail order revolution is the mass dissemination of style
consciousness. The product, improved editions of standard sportswear, seems
calculated to be instantly familiar, ready to take its place in our wardrobes
besides those favourite items that have the status of old friends. The ‘barn
jackets’ are ‘pre-aged’ and ideally battered, the twill work shirts are dyed to
look as though they have faded over the course of several years’ wear. Most
items are just like something we already own, except for some small detail,
some slight improvement that makes us feel that the version we have at home
is inferior; the gym shorts are in vivid colours they never come in at school,
the espadrilles are in gingham, denim jackets have tartan linings. The appeal
of these clothes is subtle novelty, rather than any kind of flamboyant fashion,
but it is communicated with breathtaking clarity. J. Crew, Racing Green et
al stimulate the desire to buy using the printed image; confident, relaxed
models looking like the kind of people we would like to be or to know, idyllic
locations, carefully studied styling and photography lend a kind of aspira-
tional ‘added value’. Borrowing the devices long used by fashion magazines,
they have, in my view, the potential to beat the magazines at their own game.
Whilst the magazines struggle to offer something to satisfy their various
advertisers and disparate readers, relaying the designers’ runway proclama-
tions, they are in any case preaching to the converted. The mail order
catalogues, however, insinuate themselves into the homes of the indifferent
and the disaffected and they are in a position to give a distinct and coherent
editorial point of view which seems to speak directly to the reader.
The next great contribution to home shopping has been the television
shopping channels that, again, originated from the United States. If you had
- De Bord, M., (1997) ‘Texture and Taboo: The Tyranny of Texture and Ease in the J.
Crew Catalogue’,Fashion Theory vol. 1, issue 3, pp. 261–78.