The gold-walled escalators inside the downtown Neiman Marcus still feel like traveling into the future. Even in 2024, a year of deep fakes and AI anxiety, the simple act of placing two feet on a step and being swooshed through space is the kind of magic that could transfix a child, which this escalator has certainly done over the past century. As you approach the second floor, a marquee appears like the arrival to another planet. In black letters, backlit by a holy light, the sign says: Chanel.
Last week Neiman Marcus, the king of Dallas shopping, announced its sale to the parent company of Saks Fifth Avenue. What this means for the brand, and its five stores in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, remains an open question, much like the future of shopping itself. What’s certain is that for the first time in more than 115 years, Neiman Marcus will not be run from Dallas, the city whose very identity it shaped.
Opened in 1907 by a brother and sister who made their name selling fine clothes at the turn of the century, Herbert Marcus and Carrie Neiman, along with Carrie’s entrepreneur husband, Al Neiman, the store evolved with Dallas itself, bringing luxury shopping and brand-consciousness to a part of the state once known for cotton fields. If this is an old story, one of the oldest modern Dallas can tell, it’s also a bit lost. I was taken aback earlier this week to learn that a friend, who shops at Neimans, had no idea the store originated in Dallas.
Our cultural exports lean toward the low-brow: Chili’s, Fletcher’s Corny Dogs, J.R. Ewing. But Neiman Marcus spoke to the grand ambitions of a city that rose from nothing but Blackland Prairie into a shiny neon metropolis. Dallas in 1907 was a modest industrial hub of 84,000 when Neimans opened its doors. “Tuesday, September tenth, marks the advent of a new shopping place in Dallas,” read the full-page ad in The Dallas Morning News. “We will be known as the Store of Quality and Superior Values. We shall be hypercritical in our selections,” all of which turned out to be true. Not long after that, oil was discovered near Wichita Falls, though the founders of Neimans weren’t paying attention. The petroleum industry had started cranking (Spindletop blew in 1901), but folks in 1907 were still clomping around in horse-and-buggies. What good was oil to them?
Oil would shape Texas, and Neiman Marcus became the go-to spot for the newly rich and those hoping to keep up with them. The store’s dominance through the 20th century is a tale of immaculate taste, personal touch, clever marketing, and a second generation as innovative as the first. When Herbert Marcus handed the reins to his son Stanley in 1950, Neimans entered a golden era: lavish fashion shows and celebrity clients. Coco Chanel came to visit; so did Sophia Loren, Princess Margaret, Gloria Vanderbilt. Through the decades, however, the common thread was fine-tuned customer service. “There was a right customer for every piece of merchandise,” wrote Stanley Marcus in his 1974 memoir Minding the Store. If that sounds like high capitalism, fair enough. It also sounds a bit like love. The deep attention, the intuiting of a need not expressed — to pair a stranger with the proper purchase is to understand how powerful, how personally meaningful a purchase can be.
“There will NEVER be another store like this,” reads one of the many five-star reviews for Minding the Store on Amazon. Indeed, the store was also a destination. Lunches at the Zodiac Room, appointments at the Bridal Salon, family photos by Gittings. A certain Dallas child could mark the passage to adulthood by visits through those double doors. Not me.
I grew up in the ‘80s, a Dillard’s girl among the Neimans faithful (yes, I went to Highland Park). The normies called the store Needless Markup, and though I scoured the halls of NorthPark like a pirate plundering for treasure, I’m not sure I ever entered the ritzy store that stood at the far end of the mall like a room too pretty to enter. The stately cursive font of the marquee was like a “don’t even bother” sign.
I knew about Neimans, of course. Kids at school passed around tales of Christmas Book items like urban myths . Did they really sell $5 million red snakeskin pants, or did my middle-school friend make that up? Google eludes me. They did sell a $20 million submarine, and also a mummy — well, they advertised them, anyway. Did people buy these things? Does it matter? As legend has it, the eccentric catalog items began in 1952 when news great Edward R. Murrow asked Stanley Marcus during a radio interview if the catalog had anything unusual; Marcus invented something on the spot (an Angus bull). The moment became an opportunity, and Neimans is still running with it. . Last year’s catalog included a Cadillac for about a million dollars.
So Neimans isn’t merely a store; it’s a story — about opulence, and creative commerce, and living large. It was also an experience. In 1984 my European-minded mother managed to drag me to the annual Fortnight, when the downtown location transforms into another country, this time Britain, which happened to be the birthplace of my fantasy boyfriends in Duran Duran. I spent my $10 allowance on orange neon socks, and every time I wore them, peeking out from my white Keds, I felt a bit closer to John Taylor.
It’s no coincidence that many decades later, when I wrote my first book and felt the need for a Big Purchase, I went to Neiman Marcus. This was 2014, and for months, I’d been eyeing a pair of shoes I passed on my way from the parking lot to the sections of the mall I could actually afford: Silver glitter heels from Christian Louboutin. Hot pink stitching; cherry red soles. I dreamed about them; at some weak point, I tried them on. Then, on an ordinary weekday, I swaggered up to the counter, slid over my credit card, and bought those suckers.
“I wrote a book,” I told the saleslady, who hadn’t asked. “Good for you!” she said. I’d made it. I’d punched through my bargain-basement childhood into the elite echelons of Dallas. (By the way, I’ve worn them about four times in 10 years. Very pinchy, would not recommend.)
What Neimans sold us was access to other places: Coastal tastes, finer textiles, a better life. A few days after the sale was announced, I headed to the downtown flagship on a sleepy Monday, and as I browsed the mostly empty rooms, I was struck by how many products came from tonier spots on the map. A candle called The Hamptons. A perfume line from Paris. A tea set branded “New York Botanical Gardens,” whatever that tastes like. That didn’t matter, though: the labels and scents and aesthetic pointed to Old World Sophistication. A champagne vending machine stood in the corner, selling miniature Moet & Chandon for $27 a pop. I was not surprised later that week, when I saw two Instagram hot spots in Dallas bragging of a champagne vending machine. What Neimans began, a new generation of social-media influencers shall continue.
During the two hours I was in the store, I counted about 15 people, roughly the flow of traffic in a museum (and with its fine art, cool historical photos, and elaborate set pieces, the downtown flagship basically is a museum at this point). When I mentioned this low tide to a friend, he told me rich people don’t shop in person anymore. Then again, who does?
Amazon is an investor in the recent sale of Neimans to Saks, now going by the name Saks Global. I’m no business guru (see: glitter heels), but my guess is that all parties have an eye toward creating online luxury experiences of the kind they pioneered in brick-and-mortar days. The good folks of the 21st century don’t need a physical department store to bring the world to them: It’s a few taps away. Meanwhile, Chanel, Gucci, Louis Vuitton all have their own storefronts, not to mention websites.
What we’ll miss about the old Neiman Marcus — well, what I’ll miss — is the human touch. That’s long been Neimans’ calling card, and I have no idea how it might change, but it’s changing all the time, everywhere. Face-to-face contact is disappearing in a world where our needs and wants have been outsourced to algorithms and bots who scour our browser history and never ask any questions.
The Neimans sale isn’t about what happens to the store, in the end; it’s about what becomes of an entire way of doing business. I was standing near the makeup section at the downtown store when I began chit-chatting with a woman at the Sisley counter named Dana. She was 69, with chic short hair and cool glasses. She looked like she could be Rihanna’s mom.
“Can I do your makeup while we talk?” she asked, and there was only one answer to that. Hell, yes. A makeup counter is a candy store to me: The clam-shell containers that clack when you close them, the tubes of lipstick that rise like a charmed snake when you twist at the bottom. Spritz-spritz, tap-tap.
I still love talking to strangers. We talked about the weather (hot), about life (interesting), about aging (tricky). And the swish of the brush against my face was a bit hypnotic, a massage delivered in dapples and strokes. I had no idea what she was doing to my face: This moisturizer, that tint. But it felt intimate and weirdly sacred. She chose products I would not have selected, but when she handed me the mirror, I said, “Oh, wow.”
Neimans is about the promise of transformation. That’s a commerce story, and a Dallas story, but it’s also an American story. We are always reinventing.
