It's not often that most of us shop from a catalog anymore. Online shopping, whether from massive retailers like Amazon or individual brands, big and small, have pretty much replaced the need to mail in a check and a product number in order to buy the things we want and need. While the process is ultimately more convenient, I sometimes miss the excitement of flipping through catalogs that came in the mail, even if I didn't end up buying (or asking my parents to buy) anything from them. Maybe the most iconic mailing for many folks my age, which was such a standout that we still remember it today, was the monthly Delia*s catalog so many of us looked forward to.
Unique for the early 1990s into the early 2000s, Delia*s (pronounced like Delia's, sometimes stylized as dELiA*s, but we'll discuss that later on), which sold clothes and accessories targeted to preteen to young adult women, had no brick-and-mortar stores. While kids my age usually had to go to the mall to shop for clothes, Delia*s brought the wide selection benefit shopping malls to your doorstep in the form of its editorial-style catalogs. The brand built its image largely around the free catalogs it consistently sent out each month, and because it became a staple in so many homes, the brand was established as the 'cool' clothing brand, especially for tweens and teens who wanted to dress like the models in the pictures.
While most direct mail advertisements of the 90s and today, came in the form of flat and boring sales pitches or coupons, Delia*s made a point to stand out in the mail pile. When you first looked at the catalog, you could almost mistake it for a magazine because of the way it was designed, likely in an attempt to avoid being thrown out with the rest of the 'junk mail.' Of course, to kids like me, it wasn't junk at all; Delia*s made its catalog exciting to look at. Not only was the clothing itself usually bold, colorful, kitschy, clunky, and all of the other adjectives that could be used to describe 90s-00s fashion, but the models and the page layouts were too. Girls my age posed in the clothing, but their poses has a lot more attitude than your typical Sears catalog model. The way these cool girls stood, and did their makeup and hair, and mixed and matched their outfits made little me want to be just like them. The Delia*s catalog created an image and was successful at encouraging its target customers to emulate by shopping through it.
But the pre-ecommerce strategy of the Delia*s catalog wasn't so in-your-face, especially compared to today's promo email/targeted banner ad/buy-now-pay-later approach that many clothing brands are taking. Inside the pages of the catalog, you found the item numbers and prices, of course, but they were small and usually near the margins of the page. There was a much larger focus on the imagery, and the messaging was, in some cases, only related to the clothes, or even unrelated to shopping at all.
Often with a snarky and feminist ethos, Delia*s catalogs included empowering statements to go along with the clothes they were showing off. With a highly stylized text treatment that sticks in so many of our heads, Delia*s catalogs included headings like "PluG inTo Your wOrsT feArs tO shoRt cIrcuiT thEm." While this statement had nothing to do with spaghetti strap tops, it had everything to do with building the brand's rebellious but cool personality. Delia*s wasn't just selling clothes; it was selling an attitude, all within the pages of its print catalogs.
But during the early 2010s, the catalogs began to disappear. Along with the rise of online shopping, Delia*s suffered some tough losses like a lot of other mail order and mall brands did. The brand made some investments, tried out brick-and-mortar as well as ecommerce, but by 2014, the brand filed for bankruptcy and ultimately faded away. However, it wasn't meant to last. As brands started to rely more and more on nostalgia for simpler times in their marketing, Delia*s reappeared.
Four years later, in 2018, the Delia*s brand was revived by edgy online fashion retailer Dolls Kill, and people rejoiced at the return of the brand and its aesthetic. 90s fashion is undeniably 'in' again, which allowed for the perfect opportunity to reintroduce Delia*s into a new retail space. While the catalogs are no more, the nostalgia of the excitement that used to come along with them is still incorporated into the Dolls Kill site, where the identity of the Delia*s brand has been largely untouched.
Maybe mail order catalogs are a retail fad of the past, but thankfully, Dolls Kill was able to recognize what actually worked for the Delia*s brand — its attitude and fearless approach to style — that really caused it to succeed. The catalog was merely just the vehicle for this marketing strategy, but oh, what I wouldn't give to hold one of those glossy faux-magazines in my 90s kid hands again.
