HOLIDAY SHOPPING : Catalogues--A Page From More Prosperous Era

One would hardly know from the Christmas catalogues that there’s a recession.

Consumer confidence is at the lowest level in more than 10 years, spending’s off, retail stores are discounting desperately. And still the mails bring these high-priced spreads of gourmet foods, decorative luxuries, apparel in cloth of silk, mohair, suede and 100% cotton.

Red meat goes for $25 a pound. Huge candy apples, beribboned, cost $20 apiece. Nutcrackers--nutcrackers, how baronial!--can cost $169.95. Even polyester blouses are $86.

The catalogue business, says a spokesman for the Direct Marketing Assn. in New York, is “a very healthy segment of the economy.� Some of its members enjoy double-digit growth, and 12 billion catalogues were distributed last year.

But much of the industry is hurting, like everybody else. Trade and popular press have reported that the big growth of the ‘80s has slowed, even stopped. There are sales drops, thin profit margins, layoffs, cuts in catalogue circulation and goods discounted. Postage rates for third-class mail were increased an average of 25% last year. Sales taxes may soon be imposed by the purchaser’s state as well as the vendor’s.

“They’re up against a wall,� says Hannah Bruce, whose San Francisco-based Bruce Report covers the catalogue industry, “what with last year’s war, external pressures, the recession, people pulling back from shop-till-you-drop, particularly those 25 to 44, who were the mail order marketer’s primary target. And retail has started to cut prices, narrowing many price differentials.�

Oddly, many cataloguers, supposedly an entrepreneurial group, aren’t responding. A survey of six or seven dozen catalogues sends one through a time warp to the know-no-bounds consumption of past decades. It’s not that everything is an expensive indulgence. It’s that so much is and that there’s so little acknowledgement of the changed mood of the audience.

Catalogues featuring decorative household goods and accouterments must be suffering big--but seem happily unaware. How many unconfident consumers will buy bird feeders priced at more than $100, a “rusted finish� weathered bird cage for plants ($119.95, Plummer-McCutcheon) or even a synthetic sheepskin tepee for cats ($29.95, Plow & Hearth)?

Catalogues traditionally specialize in hard-to-find goods, and indeed, it might be hard to find dish towels going two for $19 (Chiasso) or enamel tree ornaments for $145 (Gump’s) or a glass globe of snow swirling, battery-powered, around a sleigh for $129.95 (Hammacher-Schlemmer). It might be harder yet to want a high-tech ergonomic designer squeegee (about $20, several places) or a special Christmas tree “skirt�--this year’s hot item, widely available, from L. L. Bean’s $39 version to Gump’s $275 offering.

There are only hints of unease. Here a metal towel-warmer is marked down from $140 to $99. There a wine cellar is reduced to $1,675 from $2,695.

Gourmet food catalogues are much the same, sticking to the rule of Let-Them-Eat-Cake. Many have not only retained but also added to product lines capable of inciting the masses to revolution. Mail-order steak houses still offer filet mignon at $28.40 a pound (six 6-ounce filets, $63.95, from Omaha Steaks) and New York strip steak for $20 a pound (six 10-ounce steaks, $75, from Pfaelzer). Both have cheaper fare, such as Pfaelzer’s six marinated chicken filets for $35, or $23 a pound, or Omaha’s 2 1/2-pound pork roast for $39, or $15.60 a pound.

Even Harry & David, a fruit specialist, has filet mignon now, for $34.98 a pound. Other big fruit houses are trying $12.95 salad dressing and potato pancake mix at $28.95 for 5 pounds (Mission Orchards), or oatmeal at $14.95 for 2 1/2 pounds and those $20 candied apples (Pinnacle Orchards). Chocolate-covered pretzels, 12 for $24.95 (Squire’s Choice), are no longer an unusual luxury.

There’s plenty of catalogue clothing for confident consumers--often introduced by a statement of principle. If the vendors set out to reproduce the 100% cotton clothing of their Scandinavian childhood, or the durability of their great-uncle’s humble farm duds, it’s going to cost you.

A commitment to preserving Ecuadorean rain forests by using Tagua palm nut buttons on everything (Noble & Locke) doesn’t come cheap. Neither does a commitment to nature, as in “natural fibers� and such “close-to-earth colors� as palm, thunder, thatch, aurora and crystal (Tweeds, which does, however, have 16 pages of discounted goods).

Some of these catalogues just offer the kind of upscale clothing ($180 dresses, $80 men’s slacks) now marked down in department stores. Some specialize in what the J. Crew catalogue calls “high casual� clothing--$46 work shirts, $68 jeans jackets, $9 socks.

Others specialize in children’s clothing and accessories, quite adorable, rarely cheap. A baby jumpsuit can be $34, a pre-schooler’s dress in “French provincial themes� $54 (Hanna Andersson). A “movie star costume� runs $49.95, shoes $8.50 more (Just For Kids). Generally, “people won’t cut back on their children,� notes Hannah Bruce.

Surprisingly, even the do-good catalogues, whose sales support museums or public television or environmental groups, aren’t yet matching their wares to today’s purses, although their fund raising must already reflect the situation. But they, too, have their chocolate golf balls at $24 a pound, $36 board games, $65 scarves, $25 to $30 sweat shirts, $26 totes, $12 coffee mugs, Christmas cards 25 for $13.

But this is just a sampling, indicating that many cataloguers still believe that Christmas is recession-proof. And who knows? Maybe they, like President Bush, are right in believing that American consumers, offered such goods, will spend our way out of this.