“It really ISN’T just a store is it?” read an email from a reader, one of several that flooded my inbox after the July 14 High Profile column on Neiman Marcus and its recent sale to Saks Fifth Avenue’s parent company. Neiman Marcus isn’t going away, but its center of command is leaving Dallas, a city whose reputation for glitz and glamour was built on the last names of its innovative founders, Carrie Neiman and Herbert Marcus, a brother and sister who never graduated high school but still built an astonishing legacy.
Of course that brand was tied to money, but I was surprised to find how affordable old purchases at Neiman Marcus could be. Linda Bambina was a high school teacher in 1980 when she started eyeing the sale price on a pearl necklace for her upcoming wedding. She told me the necklace was “light, airy even,” and one day, the necklace plunged to half price. Only $16. “What a deal,” she wrote.
The saleswoman had a question, though. “Do you have earrings to match?” she asked. Linda did not. In fact, she’d been searching for six months for just the right pair. As Linda tells the tale, the saleswoman then “drops to the floor, pulls out 20 pairs from the drawers under the display case, and yep: the most perfect pair. $40.”
I kept waiting for the punchline. Obviously the pearl necklace would not cost $16 but $16K, and yet the punchline didn’t come. Linda bought her wedding necklace and earrings at Neiman Marcus for $56 before taxes. “Still have them,” she wrote. “Still perfect.”
The search for the perfect item has brought many a customer inside those double doors. Patsy Newman was a junior at Highland Park when, as she remembers, “I had to have Sky Blue Pink lipstick, which was sold in the girls department at Neiman’s.” My imagination exploded upon contact with the phrase “Sky Blue Pink” — was this a shade akin to hot pink? A brand? — but as of press time, Patsy had not written back to elaborate. Her email went on to identify the very place where she searched for that shade, as though the act of reading had taken her back into the store itself: first floor in the back.
Sue Owens also found herself walking through her past — specifically, NorthPark Center. “Your comment about the sections of the mall you could actually afford is ‘spot on,’” she wrote by email. “You had JCPenney at the northeast end, and as you walked towards Dillard’s, you passed lower-priced stores, including a Woolworth’s, as I remember. Then at Dillard’s you’d walk west towards Neiman Marcus where stores became more expensive, culminating in Richard D. Eiseman Jewels.”
These days, that corner is hectic with high-end names, but back in the day, it was better known for the iconic brick planters in front of the Neiman Marcus entrance, a makeshift slide whose glossy slopes children played on up and down. Sue added that she once heard the “NorthPark brick was specially made for the Nasher property. One of a kind coloring, apparently,” and indeed this is true. NorthPark Center was built by the Nashers with the same attention to detail as Neiman Marcus.
![Children gravitated to the planter box in front of Neiman Marcus from the first day at...](https://dmn-dallas-news-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/v2/Q5GXTIMXAJDVVLP7XHB3T5HXWU.jpg?auth=9a7d5b054e4f8a7912f80418bf2bb830c36d0c901dead650fbd4bee8e9087e4f&width=830&quality=80)
Some readers were reminded of other department stores entirely. “I think your beautiful reflection could apply to Nordstrom in Seattle,” wrote Ben Rippel, who described himself as a “geriatric millennial” living in Portland, Ore., though he grew up in small-town Idaho.
“Nordstrom always seemed magical,” he wrote, “with three floors and an in-store restaurant. We only had one two-story department store [in Idaho] and it was closed Sundays, when we usually mall shopped.”
Over on Facebook, my friend Margie Lavender remarked on the underappreciated figure of founder Carrie Neiman, whose remarkable rise from her childhood as a daughter of Jewish immigrants in Louisville, Ky., was memorably captured by her niece Jerrie Marcus Smith in the 2021 book, A Girl Named Carrie. Neiman was a “visionary, entrepreneur, risk-taker, and with great fashion sense!” wrote Margie, who happens to be an architect in New York (with great fashion sense) who also grew up a short walk from NorthPark, which I know because her sister Jennifer was my best friend.
![Neiman Marcus partnered with women-founded NFT project Boss Beauties to unveil the...](https://dmn-dallas-news-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/v2/VCMFITK3JVHXRPCC367ROPTD7E.jpg?auth=295097ef79293fa4a645dced7008cfd4567159eb058f9101d3337d786b22537b&width=830&quality=80)
Other folks had a more personal connection. “I worked for Mr. Stanley for 6 years,” emailed Deborah Fugit. “It was such a wonderful experience, an MBA in customer service and retail.” Deborah was Marcus’ executive assistant/office manager. “The store isn’t the same and times change, but you captured the essence of what I believe Neiman Marcus has been. What the new owners will do, who knows?”
![Stanley Marcus in the 1950s, with Neiman Marcus employees Pansy Privitt Johnson (far left)...](https://dmn-dallas-news-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/v2/EQHYUSQMMFDAZCRC4VCWYUX6MU.jpg?auth=32bb39a33a690f4341fff55590a543a69064684726b7c3b304abc8835426a528&width=830&quality=80)
The future is uncertain, as it’s always been. But the most substantive email came from Paula Schlinger, and it concerned the past.
“Stanley Marcus was a pioneer,” she wrote, “not just in retail but in leading an otherwise often backwards city into the 20th century. My mother worked at Neiman’s as a saleswoman back in the 1940s. Dallas at that time was completely segregated; however, Marcus instructed all of his salespeople that everyone was welcomed in his store.”
Stanley Marcus officially took over the store in 1950, but he was continuing a legacy of inclusion laid down by his father Herbert, a Jewish liberal with a strong belief in equality. Ironic that the brand would become synonymous with exclusivity; its operating philosophy was luxury for all. “Salespeople were trained to treat everyone with respect no matter their race, their level of education, whatever,” Paula wrote. “That was a milestone in Dallas.”
She went on to explain Stanley Marcus’ role in promoting the arts in Dallas. His influence was a constructive counter to the city’s negative branding as “the city of hate” following the Kennedy assassination. Neiman Marcus — along with the Dallas Cowboys, and Deep Ellum, and a little TV show named after our city — were part of how we shed that identity, and began to forge another.
![A mural of Neiman Marcus retail legend Stanley Marcus was commissioned by Dallas...](https://dmn-dallas-news-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/v2/S7655MV4TLHIWJSXMBOHGY644I.jpg?auth=7a394bbb1496ae1b344d5d86c2fd440f8f72197418ef370b46948e50a529548b&width=830&quality=80)
“Over the years Neiman’s became unaffordable except for the very wealthy, which I think was a shame,” wrote Paula near the end of her email. “That was, of course, consistent with the wealth inequality that grew during those years. But please read up on the history of the store and understand the critical role of both the store and Stanley Marcus in helping Dallas evolve from a cultural backwater into a modern, more open-minded city.”
Consider it done, Paula.
CORRECTIONS, 12:26 p.m., July 19, 2024: A previous version of this article misstated the publication date of the previous High Profile column on Neiman Marcus. It was July 14. The story also corrects a misspelling of Patsy Newman’s first name and clarifies that Carrie Neiman was the daughter of immigrants.