The J. Peterman 'Urban Sombrero' From Seinfeld Is Happening

With these words, John Peterman—iconic businessman, world traveler and bon vivant—told John O’Hurley, the actor who played him on Seinfeld, that he wanted to turn the “urban sombrero” into a real product. This week, he launched a 40-day Kickstarter campaign to do just that.

Indeed, while most every true Seinfeld fan knows the episode with the urban sombrero, not all are aware that the character of Peterman, Elaine’s boss, was inspired by a real person with a real clothing catalog. But his story is worth telling.

Peterman, a former minor-league baseball player, founded the J. Peterman Company in 1987 and soon grew it into a successful mail-order clothing brand that counted Bruce Willis and Oprah Winfrey as fans. Its sole sales and marketing tool was the Owner’s Manual—an illustrated catalog featuring factual but romantic descriptions of items such as the horseman’s duster and the Australian drover’s hat. Some of the bewitchingly florid ad copy was based on Peterman’s own travels.

A dog-eared copy of the Owner’s Manual made the rounds among the Seinfeld writers, and eventually—without asking the real Peterman’s blessing—they wrote a version of Peterman into the show as Elaine’s new boss. At one point, the fictional Peterman leaves it all to go to Burma, and Elaine takes over as president, conceiving the ill-fated urban sombrero to combine “the spirit of old Mexico with a little big-city panache.”

Although the headgear flopped on the show, the real-life J. Peterman was flourishing: in 1996 it raked in $70 million in sales revenue. But then, in January 1999, following an overly aggressive expansion into brick-and-mortar retail, Peterman found his company entering Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In a piece for the Harvard Business Review later that year, the company’s founder confessed to having felt “swept along” by his company’s momentum. “I watched it hit its stride—and then I watched it stumble and fall,” he wrote.

But all was not lost. When the company that had acquired J. Peterman also filed for bankruptcy protection, in 2001, Peterman managed to regain control of the intellectual property. He offered O’Hurley the chance to become a part owner and help resuscitate the brand. The actor was thrilled—and he soon proved to be a less-than-silent investor.

“From moment one, I said we should do the urban sombrero. It’s the greatest sight gag,” O’Hurley says. “There are enough Seinfeld fans who will enjoy it, and it might be the thing that draws them into the company.” To hear him tell it, the real Peterman reacted to these suggestions much as O’Hurley’s character reacts when Elaine shows him the hat: “The horror … The horror …”

Worse, actually: O’Hurley describes it as “foaming-at-the-mouth anger” that spilled over into board meetings. At one point, the two men shot a pilot for a television show about traveling the world in search of interesting things, and it featured a scene of them sharing a bottle of wine and arguing about the sombrero.

And so when Peterman finally acquiesced, it was something of a miracle—a decision justified in his own mind, as he writes on Kickstarter, by the consideration that the ill-conceived hat “has served enough time in purgatory.” (When he broke the news to O’Hurley, the actor says, “I about spit the coffee out of my mouth.”)

Peterman might as well have been speaking to all of Internet fandom—and indeed, now he is. Although he had to be “pulled kicking and screaming” into the world of ecommerce, O’Hurley says, Peterman has now embraced Kickstarter as a way to break free of his credit line and involve his core customers in the creative process.

This is reflected in the campaign’s pitch video, which depicts the mustachioed founder as the captive of banks, his creative freedom bound by financial constraints. For the past several years, says O’Hurley, “we were doing stuff that anybody could do, and we were just putting a story to it.” With a funding goal of $500,000, the Kickstarter campaign, which aims to fund the production of a flapper dress and a motorcycle jacket along with the sombrero, could mark a new chapter for the brand.

The rewards for donors include discounted items from the catalog and a full Scottish kilt ensemble. Pledge $8,600 or more and you can join Peterman on a week-long buying trip to the United Kingdom or the south of France. With 37 days left to go, the campaign has so far raised nearly $20,000.

This will never work. They will be sued for "cultural appropriation."

Sombrero Impeachments Halted at Bowdoin
March 14, 2016
Members of Bowdoin College’s student government have halted a push to impeach two student representatives for their involvement in a “tequila party” out of a concern that vague bylaws raised legal concerns, according to the student newspaper. A college spokesperson said that contrary to the story as it was reported (and initially appeared here), those concerns did not originate with from the college administration.
Many conservative bloggers railed against the impeachments, which were brought by three members of the student government against two other members who had attended a so-called tequila party, where some wore miniature sombreros and the invitation to which read, “The theme is tequila, so do with that what you may. We’re not saying it’s a fiesta, but we’re also not not saying that :).”
Although the students rescinded the article of impeachment, though they said they stand behind their reasons for bringing them in the first place. The student government is updating its bylaws, but says it won’t reintroduce the articles of impeachment.

The J. Peterman catalogue was very real and I had known about it even before watching the Seinfeld episodes when they aired. The small general contracting company I was working for in the early 90’s was on the mailing list and while I never ordered anything, while I liked a lot of the women’s clothing, the “vintage” and “classic styles”; the prices were a bit over my budget at the time, but I did love looking through it; the illustrations are very well done but most of all I loved reading the short stories written about each and every item. He seemed to be selling the romance as much as the actual clothes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_J._Peterman_Company

I mean who can’t like this description for a dress:

http://www.jpeterman.com/Womens-Dresses/Georginas-Sunset-Polka-Dot-Dress

When I left Georgina, she was restoring the 200-year-old frescoes in her 200-year-old villa in Matera, slightly south of Naples.

“Go explore the old town,” she said.

Her euphemism for “get lost for a while.”

(Actually, her villa was young by Matera’s standard, where I discovered many of the houses are carved from old caverns that are some 9,000 years old.)

After an exhausting day of “exploring,” she later restored my spirit at Le Botteghe by arriving not in her plaster-spattered overalls, but rather in a dress whose stunning color was more than able to compete with the Matera sunset.

The approving looks from diners at surrounding tables seemed to concur.

Georgina’s Sunset Polka-Dot Dress (No. 3692). Long, graceful, sleeveless, vintage cut in 100% cotton. Bodice lined in cotton. Invisible side seam zipper. Midcalf length. Band collar leads into a slightly curved V. Shirring along waistband. Side seam pockets. Separate wide self-tie belt adds a graceful touch.

Timeless femininity punctuated with tiny, almost innocent, raised white dots. Imported.

Women’s sizes: 0 through 20.

Colors: Sunshine Yellow with White Dots, Teal with White Dots.

J Peterman Style

As to Seinfeld, I recall one of the early Seinfeld episodes that took place in a big mall parking garage and they couldn’t find their car and wandered around and around looking for it the entire episode – that actually happened to me and a group of friends at the King of Prussia Mall, it took well over an hour before we finally found our car.

Not exactly the Soup Nazi, but there was a deli across the street from where I was working at the time that came pretty close. Once you made it to the front of the line, you had better know exactly what you wanted off the menu and without any hesitation otherwise you would get yelled at and told to go to the back of the line to “think about it”. And any “special requests” like hold the mayo or no cheese, etc. was met with derision and insults.

And yes, I will freely admit that when I dance I look a lot like Elaine and I also hated The English Patient. : ),

And the Smelly Car episode? One time I got a loaner car from the dealership while my car was in for a recall and the loaner car they gave me reeked so bad of BO and other bad odors that I couldn’t identify but smelled a lot like the time a possum found its way under the crawl space of my kitchen and died, and that even though it was winter, I had to drive with all the windows open and yes, the smell actually did transfer to my clothes. I also had an issue one time with a car rental company that took my reservation but when I showed up, they actually didn’t have a car for me. They “took the reservation” but didn’t “hold the reservation” and “that really is the most important part of the reservation, the holding”

The Ugly Baby episode? I had a friend and neighbor who gave birth to a baby who was, how shall I say, rather “unfortunate looking” as a new born. Seriously. As a newborn and up until about 6 months old, he looked like a combination of Yoda and Gollum. Fortunately, he grew out of that stage and grew out of his oversized ears and turned out to be a very cute kid, but even his mother cringed when looking at his pictures as an infant.

And the telemarketer? Yes. I did something very similar to this once.

Seinfeld - Telemarketer Call [Season 4, Ep. 3: The Pitch]

Of course that’s what made so many of the Seinfeld episodes so funny – it was comedy and exaggerated, but a lot was taken out of slices of real life.

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