My Twitter-following friend Pam send me the link to the tweet above from a Kyle I’m not familiar with, but I sure love his eye for a story that needs a comic title.
So for a fun distraction I scrolled the very long thread and here are my favorite reactions to this catalog cover.
Stating the obvious (lots of these)
- I don’t get why you would garden in your bedroom.
- Oh, that really made me chortle. Yikes, what is up with the dirt all over the white rug? I’m trying to picture the conversation in the concept meeting. “Then we’ll spread dirt at the foot of the bed, across the white carpet, and…” Who thought that was a good idea?!
- This gives me so much anxiety, why tf is the repotting happening IN UR FUKEN BEDROOM MA’AM???? omg I would never buy from them bc this image is cursed as hell
Concern for the rug (ditto)
- Whatever did happen to the rug? Vacuum cleaner suggestions?
- I guess she’ll just throw out the carpet when she’s finished potting plants…
Concern for the model’s mental health
- When the model on the catalog cover is also having some kind of breakdown.
- If people really are doing this we are so far from common ground on the “shoes inside or not” discourse.
- Her latest lover is outside the left hand window dangling eviscerated from a tree branch just out of frame…
- It’s giving me “I’m doing this because Buzzfeed said houseplants can help pull me out of my depression.”
- The occupational therapy for her depression has gone quite wrong.
A commenter’s cry for help?
- To be fair. in my early plant having days I did do this.
- A lot of you have never potted plants in your bedroom and… good for you, honestly.
- Weirdly validating.
An eye for tools
- W-why is there a small rake? Y’all, WHY IS THERE A SMALL RAKE?….. and a watering can? [Commenter marked the images above.]
- What’s the point of even having those gloves, Chelsea?
Pure fun
- She is in a hotel room with stolen exotic plants and transplanting them into new pots so they won’t be recognized.
- Weekend macrodosing gone very wrong
- Taking earth tones waaaaaaay too seriously.
- No, she seeds her rug with Kentucky bluegrass and waters diligently for a month while shooing away birds.
- I gotta know is she potting plants in her bedroom or did she relocate her bed to the garden shed? Both are possible.
- This is the last scene from a horror movie.
- Things to do in an AirBnB. [My favorite.]
That’s too rich!
- This has big “I have a maid” energy.
- Tell me you have cleaning lady without telling me you have a cleaning lady.
- She doesn’t deserve nice things.
- This looks like a catalog for people who are rich enough to have a maid clean up after you have a mental breakdown.
A minority reaction
- i… i don’t see what’s wrong…
But what if this marketing works?
- I think the bottom line here is that we are talking about this on Twitter and that is a ginormous success for them. I’ve never even heard of that catalog before today.
- You basically took the bait, & proved their marketing campaign. ‘Cultivate a conversation’ Hmm…do I need that soiled mattress?
- Home goods company buys gardening company, economizes by putting everything in one catalog
But do you want your bedroom styled by these people?
So even if this catalog cover can sell bed linens, can it sell Parachute’s bedroom-styling business?
Wait, did April Fool’s Day already happen?
Dang, I’m in the wrong business, if that’s bedroom styling. Mine looked that barren in college (sans the pillows), when I had no money and no things–just a random plant and a painted box for a nightstand. And I’ve rarely gotten that much potting mix on my pants, even when working outdoors. Thanks for sharing a good laugh this morning (especially loved the comment about the rake!).
Makes perfect sense. The byline under the catalogue title says “cultivate home”. They are starting in the bedroom.
I must admit that this is the strangest catalog cover ever! And the dumbest!
Shoot, she obviously took too much Ambien and is doing this in her sleep!
The only time I’ve repotted plants in my bedroom was in my dorm room in the 1970s…
As you already pointed out, this caught your eye and the eyes of many others, i.e., marketing success! However, maybe the catalog people are doing a twofer with a carpet company, and they are going to have a second ad showing how the carpet was cleaned and once again pristine? My daughter once worked for a carpet company that created an ad with a white carpet and multiple glasses of red wine on it…with a lab puppy running around. Spills cleaned up in a jiffy, and the carpet sold very well. The ad made me laugh, and so do your reaction.
For crying out loud, put a frickin tarp down if you must have a potting shed at the foot of your bed. No matter how many times I get it as a gift, I will never understood the tiny rake & shovel set.
The gloves and mini-rake are clearly only there for styling – as accessories, if you will. This isn’t gardening so much as a gardening-themed tableau.
Who puts a cactus on their bedside table???
Someone who wants to be stuck in bed.
This is what happens when the art director does too many mushrooms and no one reins them in. As someone who works in the photoshoot realm, I feel sorry for the prop stylist assistants and PAs who need to clean up all of that shit after the shoot is over. Insanity.
Hey, I’ve been “creating the perfect undone bed look” every day. Should have thought to tell my mom that’s what I was doing. Thanks for brightening a rainy day.