MERCHANDISING: Dallas in Wonderland

“I’ll give these Neiman-Marcus people a year−two years, if they have plenty of money, three years, if they don’t care what happens to it.” So, the story goes, said a passing clothes drummer in 1907 of Mr. and Mrs. A. L. Neiman and Herbert Marcus, who hoped to bring Fifth Avenue fashions to the rawhide heart of the Southwest. Last week Neiman-Marcus was not only still around to celebrate a highly profitable golden anniversary (annual sales of $36 million, earnings of $543,000) as one of the world’s finest specialty stores (TIME, Sept. 21, 1953), but it was also ready to go Fifth Avenue one better.

To mark its birthday in typical Texas-tall style, the store traveled more than 4,000 miles across the Atlantic for foreign help in turning the city into one gigantic promotion spree. Naturally, Neiman’s chose France, where the highest fashion comes from−and naturally France was only too glad to help Neiman’s, where all good Texas millionaires outfit their wives.

La Marseillaise. Direct from Paris via special Air France Constellation came a dazzling list of French business and fashion leaders. As the Thomas Jefferson High School band blared the Marseillaise, out stepped representatives of Paris’ haute couture, Pommery champagne and Lanvin perfumes, plus the mayor of Dijon, which, like Dallas, spells its name with a big “D.” Later, the emissaries from still more temples of luxury arrived−Chris-tolfe (silver), Baccarat (crystal), Fare (gloves). Altogether, some 120 top French business executives made the pilgrimage along with Cover Girl Marie-Hélène Arnaux, France’s answer toU.S. Model Suzy Parker. Dallas was frankly overwhelmed. Oohed one Southern Methodist University coed: “Gee. I hardly know what’s going on. We’ve only had three weeks of French.”

What was going on, as everyone else in Dallas knew, was probably the biggest birthday party ever attempted by any U.S. department store. All Dallas was swept into the act. For Neiman-Marcus’ “French Fortnight,” the art museum displayed 32 Toulouse-Lautrecs, and the local Lions, Kiwanians and Y.M.C.A. swooped down on visiting French dignitaries for a round of lunches and speeches. France’s most sought-after artist, Bernard Buffet (TIME, Feb. 27, 1956), won the city by sporting a giant Stetson; Authors Pierre Daninos (The Notebooks of Major Thompson) and Louise de Vilmorin were lionized at dinner parties.

The Six-Story Cake. Nowhere did the Franco-Texan ardor burn brighter than at Neiman-Marcus itself. In the store’s Zodiac Room, converted into an imitation of Paris’ famed Maxim’s restaurant by use of photo murals. Ambassador Herve Alphand opened the festivities with a speech at a $25-a-plate champagne-and-lobster dinner for the city’s rich and important. From top to bottom the six-story building was like a Gallic birthday cake. The exterior became a reproduction of chic Paris shops. Inside, the first floor was transformed into a three-dimensional scene of the Place de la Concorde. On the second floor some $10,000 worth of draperies donated by French textilemen hung amid three-dimensional replicas of Gauguins, Mondrians, Légers and Braques, made with life-sized dummies. On the fourth floor Designer Christian Dior set up a duplicate of his Paris boutique. And every afternoon eight gliding Parisian mannequins, swathed in the latest from Balmain, Dior, Jacques Heim, Jean Patou, Maggy Rouff and Nina Ricci, staged benefit fashion shows.

Altogether, Neiman’s birthday party cost roughly $400,000, of which the French government and fashion industry anted up some $80,000, Neiman’s suppliers another $158,000. The store paid the remainder−and figures to get back its investment in French haute couture and culture many times over. Flocking to see the sights and sample the wares, Dallas boosted Neiman’s sales 25% in the first few days alone, will buy something like $2,000,000 worth of finery before the French Fortnight is over. Said President Stanley Marcus, who has boosted sales 57% in five years by giving Texans the kind of luxury goods they cannot find elsewhere: “This is producing direct, cold-cash business. But it is more than just a luxury show−it is cultural and intellectual as well.”