When Women Ran Down Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Beginning of American Fashion, by Julie Saito
In 1980, Donald J. Trump made the front page of the New York Times after attacking an American journalist. Two scantily clad women in a Fifth Avenue department store,
These women were made of stone and were attached to the Bonwit Teller building, which was in the process of being demolished and replaced with a new building. Trump TowerThis came as no relief to the trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who had been promised these Art Deco bas-relief beauties—long looming above pedestrian walkways, now torn down.
The sculptures' significance was allegorical as well as architectural: department stores, though mostly built by men, had always been the domain of women. “The Ladies' Paradise” is the English title of Émile Zola's 1883 novel, based on a store Models after Good market, still standing Despite the havoc e-commerce wreaked in Paris, Patricia Highsmith framed her 1952 lesbian love story “The Price of Salt” in the fictional Frankenberg, Based at Bloomingdales,
Now Julie Saito has written a collective biography of the department store legends who ran the show – and of these places in their heyday It was actually a form of theater — for the male founders and owners whose names adorned the facade.
Bringing together these three queens from different periods was clever, along with small sketches of figures far from Fifth Avenue, such as black entrepreneur Maggie Walker, who opened the St. Luke Emporium in Richmond, Virginia, for her community in 1905; and Beatrice Fox Auerbach of G. Fox in Hartford, Connecticut, who was the inspiration for Menken's clever descendant Rachel Menken of “Mad Men.”
Not every one of these would write his or her own biography, though Odlum did write a beguiling memoir, “A Woman's Place.” Not printed in a long time, which fascinates Saito. Considered as a whole, they are a force to be reckoned with. You can imagine them circling around the great perfume counter in the sky.”Suffs” “Spritz” maybe?
Stutz, Joe died in 2005is still remembered by a certain cadre of the Manhattan elite, and his portrayal is bolstered by interviews conducted by the author, who has contributed to The Times (including the Styles section, where I used to work) and has previously written a book The Plaza Hotel.
Not that “fleshed out” is a phrase that easily applies to Stutz, who would almost certainly have been canceled these days because of the shame surrounding obesity; under his oversight, Bendel only stocked the equivalent of a contemporary size 6. But he also revolutionized retailing in 1959 with a winding “street of shops” that opened inside the store (“Street of Flops,” the then-president of Bergdorf Goodman scoffed after visiting it). Weekly open calls Known as the Friday Morning Lineup, the store sees young artisans compete for their favorite spot as if they were trying to get into a nightclub.
Shaver had long moved to New York from Arkansas, via Chicago, to hang out with her sister, who created popular and quirky designs. Little Shaver Doll Featured in Lord & Taylor's Christmas window.
After being hired by the store president, who was her mother's third cousin, Dorothy worked her way up the ranks (she eventually got her job) and made a change to the store's operations: she opened a store that was owned by her mother's third cousin. Bird CageA famous restaurant serving tea sandwiches; introducing a style of personal shopping that's refined to a high art form Betty Halbreich, Bergedorf; promoting American designers in the French-Romanian era; and, in general, establishing that “department stores could rival galleries and even museums as cultural arbiters,” Saito writes. Ashamed of being the granddaughter of a confederate who joined the Ku Klux Klan, Shaver also used her power to promote racial equality to a degree.
Among the three is Debbie Downer Odlum, devastated after her husband, a Wall Street tycoon who had bought Bonwit, left her for a manicurist (and later aviator) at Saks. A salon coworker claimed in her memoir that the scandal was the basis for the Clare Booth Luce play “The Women.”
Odlum oversaw a number of innovations, including moving hats (the 'harmless fad', also known as impulse buying) from the top floor to a prime position, creating a club for men where they could stare at lingerie models while their wives shopped, and a best-selling novel written by the head of advertising that romanticised the life of an assistant buyer.
One line read, “A great store adds much sparkle and fun to the monotonous drudgery of everyday life.” This proved true when Salvador Dali was commissioned to exhibit and, in an act of artistic excitement, dropped a bathtub full of dirty water through Bonwit's window.
Odlum married three more times, but she always remained bitter, blaming her workload for the difficulties she faced in raising her children. A grandson tells Saito, “When my grandmother died, I remember my father saying something like, 'Well, the old witch finally died.'”
There is indeed something of Oz in the Technicolor world of the department store, with pneumatic tubes that shoot cash and sales slips from the ceiling; a display director who carries a mannequin named Cynthia everywhere, even to El Morocco; an unlimited variety of merchandise, even babies up for adoption in one Oklahoma City store.
If the suburban mall damaged this institution, the Internet's 24-hour grand bazaar has turned it into a ghost town. Saito's book longs for the pleasant peace that comes when the doors close, the doormen go home, and it's time for a post-shop nap.
When Women Ran Down Fifth Avenue, Glamour and power in the rise of American fashion , by Julie Saito , Doubleday , 320 pages. , $32.50