"Seven pintucks on either side of the four-button front placket"

Everybody drives in Los Angeles.

Everywhere.

Always.

Except if you’re 13, as I was in 1987 the year the free copywriting lessons started. Then you walk home from school (Paul Revere Junior High, in my case) to find on your doorstep a catalog from a new clothing company called J. Peterman — a catalog with watercolour images of the garments (no photos!) and long copy so extraordinary, so captivating, that 19 years later it leads you to a mountain town high in the Ecuadorian Andes just to see if they were telling the truth about the “Otavalo Mountain Shirt,” made by the villagers of that town.

Claimed Peterman (then as now), this shirt’s “tiny wrinkles and creases…guarantee that you will look neither starched nor disheveled. You will look merely at ease.” Men, in particular, “will look broad-shouldered, brave, and secretly kind. Their female friends will encourage them to go without shaving for a few days.” At long last, then, on a summer market day, for $5 each and using the broken Spanish I learned at Paul Revere, I purchased three of the fabled camisas.

Shortly, I discovered that even the line about the shaving turns out to be absolutely accurate. But that’s for a different blog. Now, go get your own free copywriting lessons. Poke around J. Peterman online — make a cup of tea first, and allow a good half hour.

(Note: I posted this first to Saffron’s website.)