Orient-themed consumer catalogues let Victorian Americans buy imagined harems at home.

Evidence

In the absence of a widespread ability to travel with ease, everyday Victorian Americans could simply open the illustrated catalogue, Products from the Orient, to easily recreate harems, bazaars, and palaces that they read about in travelogues and saw on display at fairs. Those catalogues offered items such as “embroidered slippers as worn by Turkish ladies in Harems” or lanterns that gave off a glow that was “most suggestive of Arabian Night and Oriental life,” allowing buyers to purchase their own piece of the Orient. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 661

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Extends the article on consumption of dress-signaling and moral panics; here commodified Oriental imagery is sold to Victorians as domestic decor, not immodest fashion per se, but the consumer-projection angle connects.
• XREF: Connects to Edward Said’s Orientalism and the idea that the Orient is a consumable staged fantasy rather than a real place.