Did you know that J. Peterman was an actual clothing company? I thought it was just a joke on Seinfeld. Apparently so did most other people, which is why they went bankrupt in 1999. (I love the fact that Peterman bought the name back in 2001 with the help of John O’Hurley… who played him on Seinfeld.)
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Oh yeah — I used to *love* reading the J. Peterman catalogues (which I got before they were ever mentioned on Seinfeld, I hasten to add!) — they were just as described in Seinfeld. I think they really went downhill when they opened too many retail stores. I know after the Seinfeld inclusion when I rang the company to order something once and said with a smile in my voice “So, you must be getting a lot more calls because of Seinfeld, right?” the woman on the end of the line simply replied a sarcastic “yeah” with the unspoken “so are you ordering anything or what?”
We used to read–and marvel at–the ridiculous catalogs back in my grad classes in the mid-90s. When the “urban sombrero” appeared on Seinfeld, I bet most catalog readers didn’t even bat an eye–it was just silly enough to be plausible.
Amazingly, I’ve only seen maybe 10 episodes of Seinfeld and all of those were after it went off the air. Those catalogs were the best. They made it seem as though you were a massive tool if you weren’t convinced to buy those clothes after you read the descriptions. When I saw a reference to J Peterman in the show, I was thinking, “is it just me, or did they say J Peterman???” I bought a leather napsack from them and it was fabulous. Pity they went out of business – i miss that backpack.