Stuff We Like: "Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific"

My mother recently introduced me to her new favorite catalog, from the Vermont Country Store. I was an instant fan. You will be, too, if you're the least bit nostalgic. Besides the expected jellies and jams and baked goods, you'll find oilcloth tablecloths—the kind that stayed on our kitchen table for years—plus, those illuminated ceramic Christmas trees that everybody used to have on their dining room tables during the holidays; "Lanz of Salzburg" coordinated nightgowns and robes "for all the girls in the family"; and such classic toys as Slinky, Duncan yo-yos, and a collection of Fisher-Price faves that every toddler prized in the late sixties and early seventies. Between them, my cousins Grey and Stanley had the entire Fisher-Price preschool product line: the 1968 Music Box Teaching Clock, 1966 Music Box TV (remember how the scenes scrolled by kind of jumpy), the record player with those thick plastic discs that played real music, the rotary-dial telephone on wheels. (The phone had a face, and its eyes moved when you pulled it). But the absolute best section of this catalog carries vintage beauty products. Walk with me, ladies, down the cosmetics aisle on memory lane: "Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific" Shampoo, Lemon Up shampoo (it came in a yellow bottle with a big fat lemon top), Tigress cologne ("Are you wild enough to wear it?"), Woodhue cologne (which, fittingly, had a wooden top), and Emeraude by Coty. (There were lots of fragrances by Coty, includng a musk that I latched onto in junior high.) I think I just might place an order today—get myself a Raggedy Ann doll and a bottle of Arpege. ("Promise her anything, but give her Arpege.")