Every time a holiday rolls around, you know there’ll be photos of Taylor Swift, whomever is posing as her boyfriend at the moment, and a collection of aesthetically pleasing, ever-changing friends, frolicing like catalog models in coordinated clothes and accoutrements on a beach or in a pool, a cast of synchronized swimmers going for gold at the Polo Ralph Lauren Olympics. Accessories in the Instagram images can instantly become big sellers, and, in a sense, everything in the pictures is for sale.

It’s completely understandable that Swift would want to protect her real world, but the constant make-believe is disquieting. It’s not only that her relationships are arranged, but that her whole life is. She’s become both Martha Stewart and a lovely item from the Martha Stewart collection.

Paper catalogs have survived in the Digital Age, even thrived, by not selling products but by peddling lifestyle fantasies just as Swift does. It’s no longer about items but ideas. From “Why Shopping Catalogs Just Won’t Die,” by Justin Jones at the Daily Beast:

Why are retailers like Restoration Hardware, Williams-Sonoma, J. Crew, and Barney’s New York still using print publication as a viable shopping medium.

And why are they sending them to our mailbox and not our inbox?

“Catalogs are being geared more towards content over product. It’s very much about the styling and the lifestyle and the connection to the brand,” Bridget Johns, the Head of Customer Engagement at the in-store analytics companyRetail Next, told The Daily Beast.

“[Customers] look at catalogs as a magazine versus a shopping vehicle, which gives this very different experience from the one that you get online.”

More and more we see that retailers are revamping their catalogs, swapping out flimsy four-page throwaways with a few promotional discounts for mammoth, beautifully crafted, coffee table-worthy publications that rival the likes of your favorite high-profile glossy.

It’s lifestyle porn for the consumer. Brands are injecting their aesthetic and aspirational world directly into the minds of millions.•