J.Crew does J.Peterman

The J.Peterman duster has been around since I babysat for professors' kids and thumbed through their magazines (Peterman advertised in The New Yorker, not Highlights for Children). It gave me the idea of protecting the bottom part of my trousers, or my legs in fragile hose, from being splashed by inconsiderate drivers. Even though there's lot of short rainwear around, long remains my preference. I've copied the Peterman catalog's description to show that it is possible to write fanciful or evocative or even silly descriptions without doing serious harm to the English language. I don't think the duster's waterproof, or even water-resistant, nor does my current lifestyle call for anything with a "saddle vent," but I can like the coat, read the copy, and chuckle. In a nice way. I've never known anyone who owned this coat, although I once saw one on a tall guy with clipboard outside a sample sale. He looked like he wanted to be recognized.

Now I turn to another duster-like outer garment, which I haven't seen in person, even on someone with a clipboard. This is the J.Crew Nili Lotan overcoat. The breathless description leaves out the part about the elves who weave the magic fabric while waiting for the cookies to cool and then hand the fabric from tree branches for the birds to admire while the elves box up the cookies. This is disappointing: I would expect no less for an unlined garment going for $528. Otherwise the copy ticks all the boxes: in love, streamlined, understated, effortlessly chic, crafted. Aha! they left out "our newest obsession" and "we're obsessed." I always thought if you had obsessions, you dealt with them and if they really bothered you, you got help. It appears that some (collective) obsessions can just go away. Oh, and it looks to me like the coat "hits" at or above the knee, not at mid-thigh. Now I am chuckling, but not in a nice way.

It's not just the human anatomy that confuses the interplanetary crowd: I've concluded that everything on their home planet is a colloid, since the most basic concepts of, say, a straight line, up vs. down, down vs. across, and the like, continue to elude them. Clearly such concepts are not necessary on a planet where the basic means of locomotion is the ooze.

Let us look at horizontal vs. vertical. ⎮is a vertical line. — is a horizontal line. We will deal with the names of other kinds of lines in the Advanced Session. Now we look at a New Arrival in the J.Crew catalog: the Snowbound Sweater. Made of cashmere along the lines of the classic shetland crew. So far, so good.

 Granted, this is a sewn-in yoke, and a very nice yoke it is. However, there are two seams that connect the yoke to the body of the sweater, and to do this, one of them has to be horizontal. The other has to be vertical. Otherwise the result would be a dustmop, not a garment. So having seams hold one piece of a garment to another is not a feature. It is sewing. It could be a feature if the seaming were decorative. As it is, telling me that my sweater is sewn together suggests that others may not be. Well, if the sweater had been hand-knitted on circular needles, then there might not be any seams, but in that case why add them? Enough, stop, it looks like a nice sweater, I like the idea of the yoke, and I hope some kind soul will order it and let me know how it fits and how the construction is on the inside. I used to cringe when my mom would turn something inside out and point out the reasons she wasn't going to buy it. Now of course I -- is every woman's worst fear turning into her mother, or not turning into her mother? Have you ever heard tapes of your mother coming out of your very own mouth?

I warned you, didn't I, that as Hallowe'en draws near, there will be a number of posts with scary subjects. Turning into one's mother is one of the scariest.