In 1998, I worked at J. Peterman. For a lover of vintage clothing, this was pure bliss.
I worked in the fashion merchandising area, focusing on accessories, evening wear, outerwear, dresses and lingerie. Part of my job was to check the samples and make sure the specs (type of buttons, trim, fabric, etc) matched what we wanted. I had to deal with manufacturers in Italy, Indonesia and America.
My favorite part of the job was the design room, which was a huge warehouse full of vintage treasures. The design staff would visit vintage dealers and purchase clothing, which would then be copied and used for inspiration to design current lines. We would name the dresses and often write the stories about the clothing. The catalogue writers would then take our ideas and help fashion the catalogue descriptions from those descriptions.
The best memory was seeing and working with the costumes used in “The Titanic”. The J. Peterman Company was doing a line of Hollywood clothing, featuring designs from “The Avengers”, “Titanic” and “Out of Africa”. The Titanic line was my favorite and I loved the long, flowing dresses from that period. “Rose” was in my opinion one of the best characters in any modern movie and seeing the costumes that created that character inspired me greatly.
By Polly Singer
Hello Polly & Bomby
I was wondering if you might be able to help me out, i’m trying to find out if anyone out there might have an original fullscale deck bench from TITANIC? They were sold through J.Peterman back in 1998 but I think they only sold 12 or so as Fox still have the remainders…
If you know anyone who would have bought props from Peterman back then or anything I’d be very interested in knowing?
Many Thanks
Xpoit
I have a Peterman bench from Titanic. Have the bench, catalog and receipt. Will sell.