FASHIONS: Mr. Stanley Knows Best

When just about everybody who was anybody in Dallas suddenly began sleeping on candy-striped bed sheets three years ago, they had a reasonable explanation : “Mr. Stanley said it was the thing to do.” Mr. Stanley is Stanley Marcus, 48, president of the famed Neiman-Marcus luxury specialty store, and the benevolent dictator of fashion not only for Dallas but for the whole Southwest. He has made himself so mainly by superb showmanship and a solemn dedication to his job that causes competitors to refer waspishly to Neiman’s as “The Cathedral.”

Last week Showman Marcus put on his biggest show of the year— his 16th annual Fall Fashion Exposition, in which the store had invested $50,000 and 12,000 man-hours of labor. By the shrewd device of awarding “Distinguished Service” plaques to outstanding designers, Mr. Stanley, as usual, had brought headline names* scurrying to Dallas from all over the world. Many another headliner came from distant points just to bid for the privilege of paying $12.50 (turned over to the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts) to be among the 1,000 paying guests in the first-night audience.

(Tickets sold out so fast that even Mrs.

H. L. Hunt, wife of Texas’ multimillionaire oilman, had to take second-night seating.) To his dazzled guests, Mr. Stanley showed $4,500,000 worth of new wares, including $500,000 worth of furs, $350,000 worth of dresses (three Charles James models were priced at $2,000 each), and $3,500,000 Neiman-Marcus’ sales soared. Many of the guests had brought lavishly even before the show, just to be sure they had the proper things to wear on opening night.

Golden Fleece. With just such a combination of showmanship and salesmanship, Stanley Marcus has helped build Neiman-Marcus sales from $2,600,000 a year in 1926, the year he joined the family sales force, to their present $20 million level. He now hopes to boost them 25% with the new $7,500,000 addition to the main store (he opened a new $1,600,000 suburban branch in 1951).

Like his three younger brothers, Eddie, 43, Herbert Jr., 39, and Lawrence, 36, Mr. Stanley still likes to handle sales to special customers. When one East Texan could not think of what to buy his nine womenfolk, Stanley Marcus suggested nine $750 coats made of vicuña (“fleece of the Andes”), the costliest cloth on earth.

“That’s a danged good idea,” said the industrialist, “and I’ll have one too.” The store has since made the coat so popular that once, when it put $150,000 worth of coats in a window display, it sold out in a few days.

Despite the heat of Texas, Stanley Marcus has personally sold $5,000,000 worth of mink coats, and he claims that the store sells more than any other store on earth. But he once refused to sell an oilman a mink coat for his 16-year-old daughter starting school in the East because it would not be appropriate, instead persuaded him to buy a $295 muskrat. He also sees to it that Neiman’s stocks many items his customers might need in an emergency, e.g., a set of Steuben crystal plates with Mexico’s crest “because sooner or later somebody will be going to call on the President of Mexico and need a proper gift.” For particular customers, Marcus will go to any lengths. He has provided bail for customers pinched on a toot, on a few hours’ notice once rounded up a steer’s skull for a banker who wanted to take one back East for an artist friend. One oilman, who had bought thousands of dollars worth of gifts for his family, due back from a Florida trip on Christmas Eve, wasn’t satisfied just to have the presents sent out in boxes. He arranged to have all the gifts put in a duplicate of a Neiman’s show window, including spotlights and mannequins, in his house, so they would be the first things his family saw as they came in the door.

Diamond Drills. Stanley Marcus got his sales training from two masters of the art—his father, Herbert Marcus (who died in 1950), cofounder of the store, and his aunt, Mrs. Carrie Neiman (who died last March), the divorced wife of the other cofounder, A. L. Neiman. From the store’s beginnings in 1907, long before Dallas smelled any oil, Herbert Marcus insisted on buying only the best. On Neiman’s departure in 1928, after the divorce, Aunt Carrie became the dominant force of the store, proved time & again her uncanny ability to guess women’s buying tastes. By 1930, when the East Texas oil strike put Dallas astride the world’s biggest oilfield, Neiman-Marcus’ long investment in luxuries paid off by providing the natural outlet for oil barons hunting channels of conspicuous consumption. They found such gewgaws as $20 gold toothpicks, $265 champagne swizzle sticks, cuff links made of gold oil derricks and diamond drill bits.

Although Neiman’s still caters to the new rich, it does not forget that the bulk of its business comes from those who spend only $250 a year. With the $2,000 dresses, it also carries dresses for as little as $9.95. For all customers, Stanley Marcus started weekly fashion lectures, and the women who jammed in have accepted his quietly authoritative dicta. “Dallas women don’t want to be that overworked creature, the glamour girl. They just want to be themselves—feminine, nice-looking and, above all, individual.” This means an air of restrained elegance known as “the Neiman-Marcus look.” It is largely because many of the Texas new rich “were willing to be guided because they recognized an authority,” says Stanley Marcus seriously, “that they were able to avoid many of the pitfalls of the rich. In a relatively brief period, it was hard to tell them from any ‘old money’ group in America.”

Mr. Stanley also insists on improving

Neiman’s salesgirls (a top one can earn as much as $25,000 a year), teaches them the fine points of low-pressure selling. They also learn to treat all customers alike, never knowing which unlikely looking shopper may prove to be the biggest spender. Once a girl in a sunbonnet and cotton dress came into Neiman’s for a complete outfitting on her first visit to Dallas. In a few hours, she spent $10,000 of her father’s new oil wealth. The last thing Neiman’s sold her was a pair of shoes for her bare feet.

One reason for big sales, Stanley Marcus likes to boast, is that Neiman’s is the only store carrying designs by every famous international designer. “At the store,” says he, “a Dallas woman can examine under one roof what a New York City woman could see only by visiting 27 stores.” Even in New York City, homesick Texas expatriates often call up the store long-distance to do their shopping at Neiman’s. But its biggest accolade so far came from Texas-born Ike Eisenhower’s wife, Mamie. She ordered her inaugural gown from Neiman’s.

* Italy’s Marchesa Olga di Gresy, cited for her Mirsa sweaters; Paris’ Gilbert Orcel for his hats; Manhattan’s Ben Sommers for his Capezio footwear; Manhattan’s Charles James for his dresses.