dElia*s World

The 1990s dElia*s catalogs were like a window into my heart and soul.

I hate the term “late bloomer,” but I’ve always been one; late to develop physically, late to love Nirvana, late to having kids. So it makes sense that I was in my early twenties before I first laid eyes upon a dElia*s catalog. The moment itself was simple — finding it in a heap of junk mail in my ratty entry hall in Brooklyn, circa 1997 — but it would result in a lifelong love affair that endures to this day (I’m now 45).

For the uninitiated, dElia*s was a clothing, beauty, and gifts line for young women, founded in 1993. There were (at first) no brick-and-mortar stores to visit; one shopped entirely via the catalog — a notion that’s much more familiar today with e-commerce, where you can avoid ever setting foot in an actual shop (a scenario made even more relevant by the pandemic). But back then, it was a novelty, a world that existed only within the pages of the catalog and could be accessed by calling an 800 number, DELIA-NY.

The catalogs were unique and engaging — think Sassy magazine without “It Happened to Me.” (And in fact, the creative director of photography at dElia*s would later explain that the catalog’s typeface was inspired by one she’d seen in Sassy.) The young women who graced the pages didn’t have model-y, deer-in-the-headlights, vacant…