Spring and summer catalogue, no 78, Foy & Gibson, Collingwood & Melbourne, 1928.

Mail-order catalogues brought city shopping to suburban and rural locales. Nineteenth-century catalogues contained beautiful sketches of everything from saucepans to crystal ware. By the 1920s, department stores, including Foy & Gibson, were producing catalogues with glossy magazine-style covers featuring illustrations of women wearing the latest fashions in fantasy settings. Inside, black-and-white illustrations and descriptions of Foy and Gibson's considerable stock covered every household requirement from hardware to stockings.