Dreams Are Still For Sale at Saks Fifth Avenue
But perhaps for a limited time only. The big department stores are disappearing, along with the magic of shopping in style.
“Is Saks Fifth Ave closing its NYC location?” I typed into Google.
The luxury department store last week announced that it is considering filing for bankruptcy. Businesses fold all the time, and Saks’s financial troubles are the usual ones: taking on too much debt, including acquiring Neiman Marcus in 2024, and failing to make a Dec. 30 debt payment of more than $100 million.
While my New York childhood didn’t include regular trips to Saks, my mother did occasionally take me there for something special. I remember pushing through the heavy brass front doors and into the glow of the lobby, scented with a thousand perfumes, and seeing what I presumed were women who spent their days leisure shopping. These women had frosted updos and statement jewelry and carried Pomeranians with little hair bows (though I may have imagined that).
As teenagers, my friends and I haunted Bloomingdale’s, not Saks, where we tried to shoplift underwear and lip gloss. My criminal career was short-lived. Security guards nabbed us on the escalator and threatened us with juvenile hall. When they found I was carrying my mother’s Bloomingdale’s charge card, they let us go out of pure disgust.
I didn’t tell Lulu, my boyfriend’s 11-year-old daughter, about any of that. I’d promised to take her shopping for a dress for her first school dance this week. We could’ve gone to Zara or looked for something online. But where was the magic in that?
“No, the main Saks Fifth Avenue flagship store on Fifth Avenue isn’t closing,” Google’s AI told me. Phew. But Saks, with its iconic Christmas window displays and holiday crowds, would turn out to be about as packed as the raft of the Medusa. Good for the sinking store’s bottom line, not so great for shopping. So Bloomingdale’s it was.
“Everyone is so nice and helpful,” Lulu said, after a greeter in the lobby directed us to the elevators and another told us to have “a blessed New Year.” The elevators moved soundlessly and smelled of amber and fresh linen. The mannequins, the bedding and what must have been 600 designer purses were spotlit to perfection.
The saleswomen on the vast children’s floor couldn’t have been more attentive, probably because we were their only customers. They suggested dresses for Lulu, including a sequined number Liza Minelli might wear. But Lulu loved every bit of the experience: being the center of attention as dresses were brought for her consideration, practicing a spin in one with a neckline that dipped a little low.
“I’m not ready to be a teenager yet,” she said, to which I said a silent thank you. I concurred that the first dress she’d tried on—black, with cap sleeves and a lace peplum at the bottom—was the one. The saleswoman rang us up. Lulu insisted on carrying the Bloomingdale’s bag, a New York City experience she had heretofore not enjoyed. She might not have another chance.
While Bloomingdale’s currently operates in the black, most of the brick-and-mortar department stores I grew up with have gone under. I am not complaining. I love shopping online and do so almost exclusively. But the frisson you get when you hit “Buy Now” doesn’t come close to heading into Barney’s and wondering what you might find, or whom you might see.
After Saks, we dipped into Tiffany’s (for a look) and then into St. Patrick’s Cathedral (to light a candle). I wondered whether I was trying to imprint onto her what being a New York City girl had meant to me. It wasn’t about being able to afford the good stuff. It was that you knew the world of glamour and luxury was always only a subway ride away. You could have it anytime you wanted it. All you had to do was push through those big brass doors.
Ms. Rommelmann is co-host of the podcast “Smoke ‘Em if You Got ‘Em.”
 | A guest post by
|