Well there goes another piece of our childhoods...

[RetroTS]

I just read that Sears filed for bankruptcy.  How many of us here found escape from our dysphoria with their catalogs?

I used to love pretending picking out clothes!

[Devlyn]

The Wish Book!

[RetroTS]

Yes! the Wish book!

[ErinAscending]

Heeeey!  I remember that!

We also had a JCPenny catalogue storefront in my hometown.  No merchandise just a counter where you could order from the catalogue and then pick up what you ordered  when it was delivered. 

I was roundly admonished by my mother once when she was looking to order bed sheets or something and there I was at 6 years old flipping through the pages, passing up the toy section in favor of looking at all the cool dresses in the girls clothing section.   

[Melinda@heart]

I remember locking myself in the bathroom so I could browse the lingerie section. The bathroom was the only room in the house where you actually had privacy. How I envied those models and the curves they had in that satin lingerie.

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[AnneK]

When I was a kid, growing up in Canada, we had two big catalogs, Sears and Eaton's.  Eaton's died several years ago.  In fact, it was bought from the family that owned it by Sears, before Sears eventually let it die.  I'd browse through the lingerie section of both catalogs.  Of course, I still waited anxiously for the Christmas toy catalogs to arrive and folded the corner of many of the pages to mark what I wanted..   

BTW, for several years, I wore the Eaton's "Vanity Fair" stockings daily, before that line was discontinued by Sears.  When they were no longer available, I switched to pantyhose full time.

[Patty_M]

I, too, got through school with the benefit of the big Sears catalog.  The big book will be fondly remembered. 

[GingerVicki]

I was young, but i did see that thick catalog.

[JannaLM]

Not the sears catalog for me, but I found myself looking through a variety of my mom's clothing catalogs (For JCPenney, Macy's and a few other ones) when I was growing up. I loved the lingerie and dresses I could find!

I also got a catalog for women's clothes a few months ago and just flipped through it, finding a lot of cute dresses I wanted, but I couldn't bear to spend four-hundred dollars on them!

I can imagine living without the catalogs though. I can find a lot of cute clothes online now! But just having a physical catalog just feels nice and I can understand missing that big old book of beautiful clothes!

[Virginia]

Sears isn't going anywhere; they filed for bankruptcy to SAVE the business.

[Shennae]

When I was young, I too would lock myself in the bathroom and page through the lingerie and women's clothes section and dream of me ordering some of what I saw. And I also was jealous of the models' curves and big boobs wishing that was me. Oh, and I even looked through the maternity sections and wished I could get pregnant and wear those clothes and dresses and lingerie.

[pamelatransuk]

Hello RetroTS and Others

Yes for so many of us it does indeed start in childhood. Yes I viewed the lingerie and longed for the curves and boobs.

However I even longed for little girls clothing when I was 4-10. I liked the dresses and woolies. I noticed girls button their cardigans and coats the other way round and I wanted to wear them. Also little girls shoes, how I envied them. Then later women's shoes and dresses and more and on and on and on!

Oh the fantasy life of childhood and it would have been so much better as a little girl!

Hugs

Pamela

[Colleen_definitely]

Sears isn't going anywhere; they filed for bankruptcy to SAVE the business.

I'm not hopeful after a decade of a "we can't lose money on our stores if we close them all" business plan.

It seems like a long drawn out implosion caused by management who has deluded themselves into thinking that they can make more money by shutting it down.  Though honestly they probably gave themselves huge bonuses after selling off parts of the thing like craftsman so they're happy.

[AnneK]

'm not hopeful after a decade of a "we can't lose money on our stores if we close them all" business plan.

Ed Lampert took control of the company and mismanaged it from the start, though there were severe problems before him.  I was reading years ago, about how he was taking out too much "profit", to the point of being unsustainable.  For example, one of the first things he did was sell off the very profitable credit card division and took out the proceeds as dividends, rather than investing the money back into the company.  He also borrowed from the Sears Canada pension fund, while continuing to pay dividends.  As a result many Canadian Sears employees lost their pensions.   Those already on pension had it reduced by 30% .

On another note, one thing I recall seeing in the Sears catalog was tights for boys, which they carried for a few years.  I desperately wanted to wear them, but couldn't work up the courage to ask my mother to buy them for me.   

[Melinda@heart]

I worked for Sears from 95-02. When I first started, I was in college and worked part time. After 90 days I received sick leave, vacation and medical/dental. A few years later they decided to drop benefits for part time employees. At that point I was rather tired of school so I dropped out and took a full time position in the computer department. Computers were the hot thing then. Then 9/11 happened. What a dreadful day. I stood in electronics watching it all unfold on TV.

I live in a military town. Shortly after 9/11 half of the base was deployed. Sales plummeted. I was going into the "draw" which at the time was $6/hour. I was struggling to pay my bills. I went to the store manager and told him I would scrub toilets or anything else for a little higher hourly rate. He said "Your maintenance agreements are at 0% attach rate. Get that to standard and we can discuss it". Now, standard was 7.2%. I was at 7.8% for the year but this was the first week of April and I had sold nothing big ticket. I explained this to him and his response was, "Well, you can resign." So, i did and I never looked back.

There were other situations like this with the same store manager. It was people like him who I feel were a big part of the reason Sears began to steadily decline. A few years later he was forced into retirement along with anyone else close to or over 20 years of employment.

It's a shame that a company with such a long American history is falling by the way side. I do understand that Walmart and Amazon are the major contributing factors to Sears and Kmarts demise. They really dropped the ball for a lot of good, dedicated employees.

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[Virginia]

I even longed for little girls clothing when I was 4-10.

On the other end of the spectrum, I was given my female cousin's hand me downs to wear. The embarrassment and mixed gender signal combined with my parent's psychological abuse eventually led me to my developing Dissociative Identity Disorder and a female alter to cope with being molested by my Mother.