I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed it or not, but in the back pages of English music newspapers like the New Musical Express ot Melody Maker there are tons of clothing ads. Mail order ads for things like loon pants (a form of bell bottoms) t-shirts and scarves ... as opposed to the “Get Rid of Lice” and the occasional STILETTO ad that will appear in some rock mags here. Now I personally have never related to the mail order catalogue, especially for clothing. (I once mailed away for a flannel nightgown in some New England catalogue and it was A Good Investment but UGLY, and what was an attractive cotton dress in last spring’s FBS catalogue turned out to be hideous for $35.00.) But I am aware that there are people all over the country who have this mystical faith in the likes of the Sears and Roebuck Catalogue, long after they realize that they can never wear anything from it again.

The Montgomery Ward and Speigel catalogues also cater to middle America: those Gerry Ford type families who don’t like to shop much in the big cities and adore getting mail. The Eleganza Catalogue, after which this column was so lovingly named, supplies that percentage of the Black population who still want to look like Super Fly with those pimp-snappy duds. Fredrick’s we all know about by now, I should hope. But where is the mail order catalogue for ... well, I dare not say hippies, I can’t even Say the alternative or the rock culture with a straight face. Anyway — you know who I mean. Think about it for a minute.

Say you’re living in a small town, where there’ aren’t any boutiques {are there such places anymore? Lucky you ... ) and you want to buy a pair of platform boots like the kind you saw on Aerial Bender. Or say you picked up the latest copy of CREEM and noticed that Iggy Pop was wearing some fine new leather drag that you’d like for your very own. Or maybe you’re a fan of Bryan Ferry, and you saw Roxy perform in Detroit and you want a white tuxedo jacket like Ferranti’s but no place in Colon (where you live and shop) has one. So what’s the story? Well — I’m sure you get the point. There are places to send away for a David Bowie or a Lou Reed t-shirt, places you can send away for patches for your jeans or your t-shirts, places you can send away for your-name-on-a-t-shirt. Girls can occasionally find good shoes, through Fredrick’s via the mails. Wayne County, who grew up in the Deep South, fully understands the value of mail order). But there isn’t any one catalogue that you can call your very own that has within its pages all the kinds of clothes that you might want to buy easily — through the mails, and no bitchy salesgirls to worry about, either.

In London, everyone goes to the same bullshit hip stores. Because the country is smallish, copies of the hip stuff can be made fast, and through mail order ads the fashions spread across the English countryside in a matter of months. Here it’s slower, it takes longer for the huge corporations who do clothing ripoffs to get the idea. While funky faded jeans and rock group t-shirts really was a grassroots fashion fad, it’s almost taken four years for the big companies to mass manufacture them. Whereas we once had a very select few who wore record company promotional t-shirts, or those Mr. Freedom t-shirts cessories! Everything from blow dryers to glitter, rolling papers, incense, and even books like Guitar Army or The Hog Farm that you might not be able to find in your local bookstore. It could even be a really big catalogue and include records and tapes ... sure, get the record companies involved in such a venture. I’m frankly aniazed that Peter Max never did a catalogue of all his Istuff. What are Mike Lang and Art&i Kornfield doing? Now .... I’m wondering if I’ve given someone a multi-million dollar idea ... Welt, that’s okay — I don’t think want to live amidst shelves filled with stock and people filling. orders. I’m just surprised that no one’s done it yet.

Take your choice — you can sleep on him or wipe yourself off with him.

This is the catalog that makes all the others look distinctly minor league.

Etc: ... Have you heard (talk about mail order) that you can send away for you very own Mick Jagger beachtowel rnd pillow? The 64” x 34” supertowel features an “exciting, colorful, fulllength picture of Mick taken during a live performance” — and it carries the star’s personal signature. The decorative pillow is 22” x 22” and also has a full length pic of the “legendary rock star” — taken during one of his “frenetic personal appearances”. They’re made by the (what else) Now Talent Co., 663 Fifth Avenue, NYC ... I remember that when Marc Bolan was the rage in England and still with his wife June, she told me they had made up some pillowcases and sheets with his body printed on them so that all those little girls could “go to bed with Marc” ...

So — if there was one big, gigantic catalogue of that kind of stuff, as well as platform shoes or leather outfits, or white tuxedo jackets, or glitter dresses ... surely there is an audience out there for it. It’s grass roots fashion carried to the extreme. Imagine — you could sit at home and pick out your outfit the way some people pick out their hi-fi equipment. Sure it would cut down on the fun of looking for those special things, but some people don’t find that fun. As far as worrying about originality. is concerned, surely people don’t worry about such things when they send away for a Marilyn Monroe t-shirt; it’s like belonging to a club. Of course, for some of the more expensive ensembles there could be a “limited edition” so hundreds of girls don’t, say, turn up in the same dress. But people who have shopped in Bloomingdales or who buy Clovis Ruffin dresses got used to that long ago ... Anyway, sexy underwear, shows, makeup — finally there could be a way to sell that line of Alice Cooper makeup ... and imagine the acappliqued with guns, or ice cream sodas, or Mickey Mouse (can anyone refresh my memory as to when Disneyland started selling Mickey Mouse t-shirts? Did they always?), now anyone can go out and buy those rubberized panels that bear the logos and likenesses of Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, Chicago, Alice Cooper, Jackson Five.

Eleganza...Eleganza...where have I heard that before?