In our house it was simply 'The Catalogue'. In some people's homes it was called 'The Club Book'. For most working class and a good many working class families in the Western world, it was a staple part of post-war life before the advent of Internet shopping.
The home shopping club was a way to buy a wide variety of goods chosen from the pages of the catalogue and get them delivered to your home address. A big part of the appeal of these clubs was the ability to pay for the goods using credit. Each item had the full price and also a weekly payment amount listed. If you chose to buy it using the weekly payment terms, then you had a weekly visit from the club agent, who collected your money.
These shopping clubs had their origins in saving clubs that dated back to the 19th century. Their heyday was in the latter half of the 20th century. There were quite a few different companies in this field. The better known companies were Grattan, Freemans, and Empire. There were also two companies that used different brand names on their catalogues. Great Universal Stores used the brand names Kays, Marshall Ward and Great Universal. Littlewoods used the names John Moores, Peter Craig, Janet Frazer, Brian Mills, Burlington and Littlewoods. Brand loyalty meant that as these retail giants bought up rival businesses, they kept their name.
I'm sure most of us will remember these catalogues, especially those of us over 35. They had an almost reassuring presence in our homes. If you needed anything you looked in the catalogue and it was probably in there. Clothes, household goods, furniture, electronics, toys and much more. There were two editions issued a year. Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter.
In our house, 'The Catalogue' was the John Moores club book by Littlewoods. I can remember it from as far back as I have conscious memories. There was always a sense of excitement in the house when the new catalogue arrived. When we were children, that excitement was massive for my sister and I when the Autumn/Winter edition arrived in late August. Because this edition featured an extensive toy and games section near the back of the catalogue. For us the rest of the catalogue was full of boring stuff like clothes and furniture and stuff for grown ups. Up until I was about 6 that was how it was for me. Show me the toys that I could ask Santa for. Nothing else mattered. I suspect for most little boys that was the way it was.
But I was different. From the age of 6, I would still be excited to head straight to the back of the catalogue for the toys. Putting toys and games into my personal wishlist. Sometimes those wishes came true and Santa would deliver my dream toys. But you can only look at toys for so long. And so I began to turn my attention to the front of the book. To the womens fashion pages.
I didn't know why, but I loved seeing women dressed in their pretty clothes. They were just exquisitely beautiful. And I deeply yearned to dress like that. So after the excitement of looking at the toys had waned, I would take the catalogue and sit for hours, looking at the photos of the women modelling the beautiful clothes. I imagined myself as one of the women wearing these beautiful garments. And unlike looking at the toy pages, the enjoyment of looking through the fashion pages never waned. I would see clothes that I really liked and return to view them again and again. For a few months these clothes filled my mind. And then a big chunky A4 parcel would arrive. And suddenly my favourite pictures of gorgeous fashions would disappear. And it would be replaced by a new catalogue. The Spring/Summer edition had arrived.
The Spring/Summer edition of the catalogue had far less distractions in the way of toys, which were in the Autumn/Winter edition because of Christmas. The focus of the Spring/Summer edition switched to outdoor pursuits, such as camping, gardening, leisure and Summer sports instead. But the clothing sections were as large as always. And that's what I focused on. Lovely Summer fashions that I adored. Gorgeous floaty dresses and skirts that I dreamed of wearing. I loved the fashions of the 1970s. They were so influential in my future development as a Tgirl.
Peter Craig Spring/Summer 1975
As the 1970s progressed I found another level of enjoyment from the catalogue. Something I had in common with many other pre/young teenager boys. The lingerie section. I had always enjoyed looking at the lingerie section of the book, and imagining wearing such wonderful underwear, that was so much more exciting and attractive than the matching vest and Y fronts that I had to wear as a boy. But as puberty beckoned, my interest developed another aspect to it. Sexual attraction to the ladies modelling the lingerie as well as a desire to be like these beautiful ladies. Now most boys of that age had the sexual attraction without wanting to be like these ladies, but of course they weren't trans. I was.
The pages of the nightwear and lingerie sections and in the Spring/Summer, swimwear were a source of much excitement and sexual yearning for me. And in the late 1970s, they took on another level for me. Because that was when I went from wishing I could wear these lovely clothes and lingerie, to actually wearing womens clothes. Of more specifically my Mother's clothes and occasionally my great aunts garments. Because as I became a teenager I also became an avid and enthusiastic crossdresser.
I found myself preferring the longline bras, corsellettes and girdles, both to view and to wear. And I was delighted to find a draw full of such underwear that was exactly the same as what I was lusting after in the pages of the catalogue. Somehow I instinctively knew that I should keep my desires to wear such wonderful underwear to myself. Especially from the other boys. Occasionally a group of us teenage lads would be at one of our houses, and someone would suggest we took a look at the bra and knicker pages of the catalogue. And as we viewed the gorgeous underwear I played along with just fancying the scantily clad girls, and not letting on about my yearning to be one of those girls.
Names like Gossard, Berlei, Triumph, Miss/Lady Mary and my favourite, Playtex were constantly on my mind, along with the associated images of feminine loveliness. And from my early teens on, I got to enjoy wearing many of the beautiful items of underwear I saw displayed on the pages before my eyes. My Mother had a curvaceous figure. Not plump but curvy. When I was a young teenager she was a size 14, and so was I. So I was able to slip into her clothes quite easily. In the early days I stuffed the bra cups with my socks to create breasts, but soon hit upon the idea of taking a pair stockings and filling them with the foam balls from an old bean bag. They worked quite well. I was a very resourceful teen Tgirl. It was a special thrill to compare myself in the mirror with the models wearing exactly the same underwear on the pages of the catalogue. Although most of the clothes would be completely different in each of the catalogue editions, the womens underwear stayed remarkably the same. A few new additions but the big brands kept their underwear ranges fairly consistent.
The Lingerie Section
As I moved out of my early teens and my hormones settled down, the lingerie section became no more or less important to me than the rest of the womens fashion pages in the catalogue. I used to love gazing at all of the beautiful clothes,lingerie, shoes and accessories. And my Mother regularly bought clothes from the catalogue, so often, clothes would appear in her wardrobe or drawers, that I had dreamed of wearing as I gazed at the pages of the catalogue. It was always amazing to wear something that I had seen in the catalogue.
I dressed throughout my teens and spent many a happy dressed en-femme, pouring over the fashion pages of the catalogue. I loved how the styles changed a little each year as new fashion trends took hold. Especially as the 70's changed into the 80s and fashion evolved quite quickly.
By the latter part of the 1980s and into the 1990s, my crossdressing became very sporadic and often non existent for long periods. But I still enjoyed looking at the womens clothing pages. However I didn't pour over them in the same way that I used to, visiting them on an almost weekly basis like I had done. By now the catalogue had become a practical presence in my life, rather than just fuel for my femme fantasies. If I needed something particular I would reach for the catalogue and see if they had it listed. An example of this was in the early 1990s when I won a compact disc player in a lager manufacturer's promotion in my local pub. It meant I would need to get rid of my old stereo record player (an Amstrad unit bought from the 1981 edition of the catalogue for my Christmas present) and get a seperate amplifier, turntable and speakers to create a small hifi system for my bedroom. Where did I turn to for these items. The catalogue of course! And a Technics turntable, Marantz amp and Wharfedale speakers were promptly delivered to our door.
The home shopping catalogues kept the same concept well into the 21st century, but one thing that largely disappeared in the 1990s was the agent who collected your weekly payments. By now people paid over the phone or set up direct debits or standing orders. In the 21st century this expanded to include online payments.
When I moved out of my parents home, and settled down with my Wife in our new home in the mid 1990s, we signed up for a home shopping catalogue, as most people did. Our catalogue of choice was Littlewoods. At this point I was feeling some more femme stirrings and the catalogue certainly added to those. My wife would buy clothes from the catalogue and if I liked what she had bought I would wear them occasionally. I wasn't avidly crossdressing like I did when I was younger at this time. Generally the catalogue was now for many other practical purchases than clothes. We bought furniture and household items from it. I also remember buying my first DSLR camera set up from the catalogue, a Sony a200 with 300mm extra lens bundle.
For my Wife and I our relationship with Littlewoods and home shopping in general ended on Christmas Eve 2010. Our washing machine suddenly broke down and the repair man advised that the cost of repair was such that it was advisable to get a new one. So we needed one in a hurry. Where did we turn to? The catalogue of course. My Wife ordered it and paid for it to be delivered, fitted and the old one taken away. She was very surprised when they said it would be delivered and fitted on Christmas Eve. I was at work on Christmas Eve morning. When I got home in the early afternoon, I found a washing machine still in it's packaging in the middle of the lounge, and my Wife in tears. The guys delivering it told her it was delivery only. They weren't going to remove the old one and plumb in the new one. She insisted that she had paid for that service. She phoned Littlewoods and found they had closed for Christmas. She asked the delivery guys to take the new unit back as she didn't want it. They refused and just drove off. So on Christmas Eve, after finishing work, I ended up having to unplumb and drag the old machine out into the back garden, and then drag the new one into the kitchen and plumb it in myself, which was hard work for someone with no previous experience of such a task. We were both very angry. On the first working day after the Christmas break, my Wife phoned up Littlewoods who confirmed that she had paid for fitting and old unit removal. They refunded her the delivery and fitting charges. They offered us future discount vouchers to make amends but we told them to stick them where the sun doesn't shine. The Littlewoods catalogue went in the bin. We cancelled our account and never used a home shopping service again.
By now the death knell was beginning to sound for this way of shopping. Credit was easy to find and available on almost anything you bought on the high street or online. Yes, I said Online. The new kid on the block. The gatecrasher that was going to wreck the party.
The Internet came into our lives in the mid 1990s. It took a while to really establish itself in our lives, but in the early 2000s with the arrival of fast broadband connections it really took off. And so did online shopping. You could buy most things online and get them delivered to your door. And one company in particular would deliver the final fatal blow to the home shopping concept. Amazon. Because on Amazon you could buy as many different items as you could from a home shopping catalogue. The one area that Amazon wasn't so good in was with clothes shopping. But many clothing suppliers were selling online, including most of the high street chains. Marks & Spencer, Next, Debenhams, John Lewis, Monsoon and a whole host of others appeared online. It changed the face of shopping completely. Online shopping has slowly stifled shopping on the high street and threatens it's existence. But in the case of mail order home shopping, it has completely replaced it. Recently retailers from the far east like Shien and Temu have been making huge in roads into the online market in the UK.
The last home shopping catalogues were printed around the middle of the 2010s. The Littlewoods group produced their last physical catalogues in 2015, before moving to being online only. Littlewoods has since rebranded under the name Very after merging with K&Co, company that bought Great Universal, Kays and Empire. Very is owned by the Barclay Brothers. It trades as Very but still has an online subsidiary under its old name, Littlewoods. Grattans and Freemans merged in 1986 to become Freeman Grattans Holdings but kept both names seperate. This is still the case online with the Kaleidoscope and Curvissa brands joining Freeman and Grattans as their brands. So the reality is that the old home shopping brands have become effectively become two companies operating across the online retail world.
So that should be an end to my history with the catalogue. I have bought things from Very on occasion so that connection is still there, but that's about it. Except it's not.
I found myself feeling quite nostalgic about the old catalogues and their place in the history of my femme life. And then I discovered that I could purchase PDF copies of the old catalogues for £6.99 a copy. I purchased a copy of the John Moores catalogue from Autumn/Winter 1976/77.
Looking at was wonderful. I am very interested in anything that is mid to late 20th century and I love the fashions, and the furniture and furnishings of that period. So the whole of the catalogue is now a wonderful reference piece to the period that I grew up in. Some people refer to the 1970s as the decade taste forgot, but I have always loved it's in your face vibrancy. Quite simply it was my favourite point in time along with the 1980s. I now have another two PDF copies of John Moores catalogues. Autumn/Winter 1978/79 and Spring Summer 1980. It's a lot of fun to have a look through the old catalogues remembering happy times from the past. And especially looking at the gorgeous fashions again. It's especially exciting when I see things my Mother owned and I wore as a budding Tgirl.
A PDF copy of John Moores Spring/Summer 1980
Having got some PDF copies of old catalogues then I found myself wanting a physical copy of a catalogue for old times sake. You can buy them on Ebay. Mostly from the 1990s and 2000s. Occasionally one from the late 1980s. They command a huge price. From around £80 up to about £350. I have only seen one from the 1970s for sale. It's not available for sale anymore. Because it's now in my garden studio/dressing space.
I managed to buy it for £90, which is a lot for an old catalogue, but in the world of collecting, is a bargain. It was a bargain because the person selling didn't understand what they were selling and so put too low a Buy It Now price on it. And I just happened to see as it became available and bought it instantly.
It's the Peter Craig Spring/Summer 1975 catalogue. And it's very unique. Because it doesn't have a full colour cover displaying a picture and the edition details on it. Instead it has a plain white paper cover with the Peter Craig name printed on it, and an explanation that due to unusual demand for this particular catalogue, they have produced a copy without a proper cover or index pages. They were able to meet excess demand in this way because beyond the name, cover and index pages, the contents of all of the Littlewoods group of catalogues was identical. I can remember our John Moores catalogue at home being exactly the same as my Auntie's Peter Craig catalogue. If anything it should add to the value of the catalogue. But the edition wasn't displayed on it anywhere. The seller described it as possibly 1970s. For the price I took a punt on it. It was definitely mid 1970s. But what year? It didn't say anywhere. But I could give Miss Marple a run for her money in the detective stakes. These catalogues used to have a page listing records and cassettes for sale. I'm a keen collector of records. And two records listed confirmed which edition it was. The Spring/Summer edition arrived on our doorsteps in February each year. This edition listed for sale, Diamond Dogs by David Bowie and Caribou by Elton John. The former was released in May 1974 and the latter in June 1974. Therefore they couldn't have been listed for sale in a catalogue released in February 1974. Elton had only just finished the recording on January 1974 and this catalogue would have been printed before then. So Spring/Summer 1974 was out. It had to be Spring/Summer 1975 because as well as these records, there were no early 1975 releases listed, which ruled out 1976. The lack of a proper cover actually makes this copy quite rare. Although any copies from the 1970s seem incredibly scarce. I'm lucky to have it.
My copy of Peter Craig Spring/Summer 1975
I love seeing all of the old fashions. I think that nostalgia is quite an enjoyable and powerful thing in our lives, that can bring happiness and warmth, if it's balanced with making the most of the here and now. It's lovely seeing things how they were.
So I have a rather unique and wonderful piece of history to enjoy reminiscing with. It's wonderful and really takes me back to a special time in my life. A time when the girl within me was beginning to stir and start to awaken. The weird thing is that when this catalogue was delivered by Evri (yes I know it's a miracle it got to me in one piece), I felt that same frisson of excitement that I used to feel when the postman used to deliver the catalogues of old.
Happy memories of something incredibly influential in creating the femme being that is me.
More from my Peter Craig catalogue
And now I have a yearning for some foundation wear in some outrageously bright colours. I think I need a time machine.
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