About the L.L. Bean Catalog
This is the time of summer when I inevitably start fantasizing about the pleasures of autumn. That's especially the case this year: I think we can agree that, no matter where you are in the world, it's been a summer to inspire autumnal longing. Between the wildfires, extreme heat, earthquakes, and diarrhea lettuce, summer 2026 has felt less like a season than an existential reckoning.* Mother Nature has had enough; she's handed us our eviction notice.
I was thinking/worrying about all of this when the L.L. Bean catalog arrived in my mailbox a couple of days ago. Neither David nor I shop with L.L. Bean; the catalog just appeared unbidden, as most catalogs do.
I was about to toss it in the recycling bin when I took a closer look at the cover. FALL LIVES HERE it read, in a non-confrontational serif font. The man on the cover wore a flannel shirt; next to him stood a woman wearing a sweater patterned with a pheasant in mid-flight. They looked self-contained and like they hadn't perspired in months, or possibly ever.
I opened the catalog and fell immediately into a nostalgia vortex. In part because I grew up in an L.L. Bean family, in part because the L.L. Bean catalog of today is more or less indiscernible from the L.L. Bean catalog of 40 years ago. True, it's become a slightly more daring place for women's jeans — the mid-rise barrel leg and high-rise boyfriend have infiltrated its pages — but the catalog is still where you go for duck boots and fleece pullovers, the kind of durable, deeply sensible clothing equally appropriate for hiking trails and old-money clambakes.
As I thumbed through the pages of cotton percale bedding, shrink-free cotton polos, comfort stretch pants, and long-sleeve mockneck tees, I felt a sense of calm and gratitude settle over me. Here was a place where the promise of fall was alive and appropriately attired, and where no one tried too hard. The catalog is a land where an oatmeal-hued sweater is a totem of comfort instead of an admission of surrender, and where slippers are given seven entire pages of prime real estate.
Browsing the profusion of slippers, along with the flannel pajamas and Wicked Plush robes, it occurred to me that L.L. Bean functions effectively as a seasonal depression outfitter. Yes, it will happily dress you for a hike or an afternoon spent chopping wood, but at its heart — literally, the slipper spread is smack in the middle of the catalog — L.L. Bean is just as happy for you to take to bed from late October until the middle of March.
It is for this reason that I now regard the L.L. Bean catalog as my version of pumpkin spice, hygge by way of the U.S. Postal Service. I'm not saying that I'm going to rush off to order a monogrammed tote or pair of slipper clogs, but I will say that I have gained a new and robust appreciation for the unassuming comforts to be found in the catalog's pages, and that the next time I need an antidote to my late-summer malaise, I'll know where to find it.
*Except, perhaps, if you're a Knicks fan.
What I'm consuming this week:
Watching: This breathtakingly weird scene from the 1966 black comedy Lord Love a Duck. I'll never look at cashmere sweaters the same way. (Thanks, Mike!)
Reading: Peter Hujar's Day by Linda Rosencrantz. (Thanks, Gautam!)
Listening: "Jolene." RIP Dolly, please don't leave us, we need you.
