Book Review—When Women Ran Fifth Avenue by Julie Satow

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 out their own ways 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.

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Playing Old Maid

Do you remember the Old Maid card game?  The goal was to match pairs of cards.  One had no match and the person left with it at the end was called the Old Maid.  It could be played with a regular deck, where players simply removed one queen.  However, special decks were made with all kinds of different pairs—men, women, children, even inanimate objects, often revealing stereotypes of the era.

This one, with its golf girl and typewriter, probably came from the early twentieth century. Its Old Maid looks particularly sour.

How did the old maid card evolve over time? The (usually) older woman is often a figure of fun, not always in a nice way.  She’s usually dressed up in old fashion clothes.   By the second half of the twentieth century, her image has solidified to stereotypical markers of the old lady of yesteryear—gray hair in an old fashioned updo, granny glasses, and a ruffled collar at her neck. Cats sometimes make an appearance.

2017

Sometimes they are all cats! I’m told that JD Vance uses the deck above to this day.

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Still Life with Curlers, 1975

Found photo

Do you remember curlers?  I do—a kind of torture device from my youth that I used to tame my curly hair.  The sort I used had brushes inside with plastic sticks to keep them on overnight.  Perhaps they were the source of my teenage insomnia. 

Why anyone would want to have a picture of their hair in curlers?  Was this perhaps taken to document an impromptu visit?  Neither of the women, one middle aged and one older, looks very happy posing. 

We see a clear generational contrast between the two women.  The younger one, on the right, wears a casual top and pants.  The older, on the left, looks to be wearing a polyester knit dress, so popular in the 1970s.  Hers is a little too small. 

Even more puzzling is the fact that this was a picture postcard, made by a company that has left no trace on the internet.  At least the women had the good taste not to send it.

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Dots and Dogs, 1910s

The Library of Congress has a large collection of high quality prints from the Bain News Service, the first news photography service in the US.  The collection focuses primarily on people and events from 1900 into the 1920.  George Grantham Bain not only made his own images, but collected important photos from local American and foreign newspapers.  The most frequent images are of people and events in New York City.

I’m not quite sure what this photo, featuring Mrs. H. A. Pell on the left and May Burroughs on the right, commemorates. And what was their relationship?  I doubt if they are mother and daughter, since the use of Burroughs’ whole name without a “Mrs” indicates that she was not married.    

It was Burrough’s multi layered outfit caught my eye, featuring a dotted fabric as befits an older woman, but with very big dots.  I imaged that it was a Chinese brocade.  The construction of her ensemble is puzzling.  It looks like the dotted outfit is some sort of a sleeveless wrap.  Underneath is a sheer blouse or dress that provided the sleeve.  On top of that, she wears another sheer organza-like topper.  An explosive veiled hat with feathers finishes off the outfit.  All of this makes me speculate that May Burroughs was most likely Mrs. Pell’s eccentric aunt.

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Half Sizes on Film, 1963

Knowing my fascination with half sizes, researcher extraordinaire Davrie Caro found this short 1963 British Pathė film advertising half size dresses made by the American manufacturer Lilly Lynn.  It shows a group of five women touring the offices of the Good Housekeeping Institute, beginning in the appliance testing area and ending up in the makeup room.

The target audience for half sizes—shorter and wider women—is never mentioned directly, but the printed subtitle calls these “dresses for the womanly woman.”  Although that should sound double nice, it somehow implies bigger than usual.  References to size also come in the chirpy commentary, beginning with the a description of the first dress, which “is styled with the purpose of giving a woman breathing space, reaching room, yet with a trim line.”

In my view, there is only one woman, on the left above, who looks like she might need some extra breathing space.  She is also the only one whose outfit has a whiff of the later 1960s, in her short boxy jacket with three quarter sleeves.

Did Lilly Lynn pay for the film?  If so, I don’t think the company got its money’s worth. The brand is only mentioned once, despite flattering descriptions of all the clothes.  Would anyone remember who designed them?  I also wonder if anyone would be inspired by the final line, “Today’s half size dresses make the womanly woman look as trim as she should.”

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Audrey Smaltz–A Life in Fashion

Audrey Smaltz (1937-) is so famous in the world of fashion that I’m embarrassed I only recently learned about her.  In my quest for older women who think fashion is fun, I came across her name in Simon Doonan’s book Wacky Chicks: Life Lessons from Fearlessly Inappropriate and Fabulously Eccentric Women.  I’m not sure she fits in all those categories, but she has an amazing life story.

Born in Harlem in 1937, she began her fashion career New York.  In her thirties, she moved to Chicago and became a fashion editor for Ebony.  One of her jobs was to host the Ebony Fashion Fair, a mobile fashion show that traveled around the country showing the latest styles to Black audiences.

Smaltz with Ground Crew, Ebony, September 2007

After seven years with Ebony, she founded her own company, Ground Crew, which organizes the back stage for all kinds of fashion shoots and fashion shows.  In this capacity, she worked many big names in fashion, including Donna Karan and Oscar del la Renta.  The company still exists today.  She has also written for major fashion magazines.

After a lifetime of dating well known black men, she met her life partner, former Olympian basketball player Gail Marquis, in 1999. After a twelve year long relationship, they were married in 2011.  Since then she has become a vocal advocate for gay rights.

Now in her eighties, she still makes waves at fashion events.  She offers her time and expertise as a mentor to young people entering the industry.  As you can see in the snapshots above, she pays no attention to the more conservative fashion advice given to older women—cover up, avoid bold prints, don’t stand out too much in a crowd.  After a long life in the fashion industry, she can make her own rules.

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Beatrice Wood: Life is an Art

In her 1988 autobiography, I Shock Myself, artist Beatrice Wood (1893-1998) relates that friends once confronted her and asked her to be more conventional in the way she dressed.  She complied, buying a tailored suit.  “Four months had passed when one day I realized that I had withdrawn into a shell. Puzzled, it suddenly occurred to me that I was subdued because of the suit.  I felt uncomfortable in it, totally not myself.  From that time on, I made up my mind that I would dress the way I wished.” (115)

By the time she became a celebrated artist her wishes were quite elaborate.  Her outfits came to show her life story and her wide ranging tastes.  The indigo shibori shawl above might have been bought on a trip to Japan.  The sari-like garment perhaps came directly from India.  And the big bracelets look possibly Tibetan.  Along with folk art, which you can see in the background of this photo, she was an avid collector of jewelry.

Wood took a winding path to become a famous artist.  You can read a short life history here.  The scanty photos of her younger years show that it took her awhile develop her wrapped and decorated style.  In her youth she favored embroidered tunics.  She added more and more jewelry as she aged.  By the time she moved to Ojai California, a gathering spot for independent thinkers, she added hats, unusual dresses, and saris.

Most of the photos of Wood in her old age (she lived to be 105), show her wrapped in shawls and saris, with earrings, necklaces, bracelets, and rings of every color and shape.

If you think about it, she found an elegant way to present her aging body.  Wrapped up in gorgeous textiles, with a jewelry collection from a lifetime on display, she was the embodiment of a motto she lived by: “Life is an Art.”

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Girl Group on Vacation

Found photo

Party on!  The almost illegible writing on the back of this photo says “At Holesko’s cottage in Canada.”  There is no date, but looking at the clothing and hair styles, I’m going to guess it comes from the late 1950s or early 1960s.  The condition of the photo, with rounded corners and a hard plastic finish, doesn’t help. The madras shorts worn by the woman on the right might tip my guess toward the sixties, the age of madras.  However, the women in the back row still wear very long dresses.  What do you think?

Perhaps this shows the female side of a family reunion.  I’m guessing the women came from the US or else the photo would have made clear just where in Canada Holesko’s cottage was.  Judging by their faces their ages might range from their forties (the two with brown hair) well up into their seventies or beyond (the one in back almost hidden by the others.)

What a bold lineup in the front row.  I think the woman on the left wears a swim suit covered with a blouse on top.  Is that a Jantzen logo?  The suit appears to be riding low on her body, giving her a very long torso.  Kudos for showing a lot of leg.  Note the different lengths of shorts on the three in the front, including long Bermuda shorts which were popular in the late 1950s. They cover up almost as much as a skirt. 

1958 Sears Catalog, Fashionable Clothing from the Sears Catalogs, late 1950s

All of those in the front row show normal body changes that come with age, including an expanding belly (the menopot) and higher waist.  And what about the three older women in the back, all in longer dresses?  I guess they weren’t comfortable exposing their bodies to strangers like me.  What did they wear if they took a dip into that beautiful Canadian lake?

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What to Wear to the Grand Opening, 1986

Older women face sometimes difficult choices when they appear at public events, even one as humble as a grocery store grand opening.  On the right is LA City Council member Pat Russell (1923-2021), in her early sixties here.  She has taken a fairly predictable path, with light colored pants, a dark sweater, and a blouse with a bold print.  Respectable and perhaps forgettable, unless you like flowered blouses.

The unnamed woman to her left has a different take on acceptable attire. She wears long braids, a scarf tied at her neck, and what looks like a handmade poncho using the popcorn stitch.  (I looked it up.)  Obviously not bound by current trends, she is a true fashion eccentric.  Was this a dress up outfit or what she wore every day?

While it’s easy to find out about a lot about Russell, the woman on the left is unnamed.  I imagine she is a community organizer who fought hard to get the new market in the largely Black neighborhood of South LA.  You can imagine the advantage of a unique look for an activist—“Just look for the older woman with the long braids.”  I wish I knew the color of the poncho and whether or not she made it herself. 

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Older, and Even Older

Found photo

To study older women is to lay claim to a very large field.  Women can live a long time after fifty, and people react to changing styles in different ways as they age. You can see that very clearly in what I suspect is a mother-daughter photo from the 1920s, with both women well advanced in age. The daughter on the left, maybe in her fifties or sixties, still shows some interest in the current fashion.  She wears a dropped waist dress with a long slim line. Her shoes are a popular twenties style, and she wears them with flesh colored stockings. Note that she has also bobbed her hair.

The mother, maybe in her seventies or eighties, has a more tenuous relationship to the prevailing styles.  Although her dress has a dropped waist, it is very full at the bottom and also quite long.  Her hair is gathered up on the top of her head, a style she might have worn for decades. She has on sensible black lace-up oxfords, long beloved of older women, worn with heavy black stockings. 

I have an imagined conversation between the two. “Mother, you could look younger if you just changed your shoes.”  And the mother replied, “I don’t take fashion advice from someone who has cut off all her hair.”

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