One of my memories from the early ’90s was this clothing catalog for little girls called “Storybook”….the images from that catalog have solidified in my brain like a plaid gelatin. And finally I have found some proof of it on the Internet! Sadly, Buzzfeed has not yet tackled the “25 Ways You Know You Got Mail in the ‘90s” list so I’ll have to do it here.
The Storybook aesthetic was “fancy little fuqs who must be in the Clinton family because why are they going to White House Easter Egg Hunt shit all the time??” and the dress silhouettes thinned as you age- ranging from toddler-esque cupcake chic to “MY MOM IS A DRAPE” type dresses for mothers who cut a paper doll figure. Nearly every page featured a shimmering JonBenet type flanked by a matchy-matchy flower girl sibling and mom with a wandering smize.
I don’t know why I had a subscription to this thing- either it came in the mailer package for American Girl OR it found me when I was on the hunt for the perfect child bride dress for that Catholic school ceremony where you eat Jesus for the first time. My closet was bereft of anything from Storybook, but I remember poring over the catalog pages with the ferocity of a prepubescent consumer who just finished level 3 of Reader Rabbit. The one thing I convinced my parents to purchase for me was the life sized version of this sleeping bag and IT WAS THE BEST EVER. I cracked it open years ago and knew it was time to throw it away because it started smelling like rotten barbies.
PLAID DRESSES EVERYWHERE. Is this Storybook trying to negotiate grunge with the sartorial needs of pretensh-oids across the country??
