American Age Fashion

Although women never really ran Fifth Avenue, three remarkable women did manage landmark department stores from the 1920s to the 1980s.  Satow’s book is a collective biography of each–Dorothy Shaver of Lord and Taylor, Hortense Odlum of Bonwit Teller, and Geraldine Stutz of Henri Bendel.  All of them were brought in to manage stores in crisis, and each figured her own way to make them profitable. Shaver sought out American designers and developed a unique style of advertising.  Odlum reconfigured the ground floor as a goldmine for impulse shoppers and introduced exciting shop windows.  Stutz made her smaller store successful by aiming at a niche clientele of thin, wealthy, and status conscious shoppers.

Dorothy Shaver is the best known of this trio.  She gained the reputation of being the best paid woman in America, even though she was still paid less than her male predecessors.  Only her death in 1957 removed from the job.  Hortense Odlum had her position thrust upon her in the mid 1930s when her Wall Street investor husband bought Bonwit Teller.  Although she made a success of it, her husband used it as an opportunity to leave her for his girlfriend.  After Oldum stepped down in the forties, she blamed her position for the demise of her marriage.  Stutz’s career is the most recent of the three, spanning the years from 1957 to 1986.  Her buyers toured the world for unique treasures and undiscovered designers, turning the store into a hub of innovation. However, she was eventually done in by the rise of suburban malls and discount stores. 

Read together, these biographies give life to the American department store in its heyday.  I wish Satow had paid more attention to the subtheme of the book—the dawn of American fashion.  She shows how the innovative Shaver promoted American designers in the thirties, and even includes a brief overview of Elizabeth Hawes, one of the women she discovered.  After this, however, American designers and the fashion industry fade into the background until the middle of Stutz’s career, which comes relatively late in the book.  In her search for the unique, Stutz discovered new American talent including Stephen Burrows and Ralph Lauren.

This is not only a collective biography, but also an elegy for great American department stores, which were once places for leisure and entertainment as much as shopping. Now we can buy what we want from home, but it’s hardly a sensual treat.  As someone who vividly remembers the Christmas windows in Chicago’s Marshall Fields from my childhood, it’s hard not to be sad for what was lost.