Best & Co., Bloomingdales. Brooks Brothers, B. Altman. These are the stores of my childhood.
I once wrote a piece called Shopping Yesterday, which brought it all back – those Saturdays spent shopping with my mother, an all-day affair that was both tiring and exhilarating. The attention to the customer, the conversation, the wrapping up in tissue paper, or, even better, a box. Items weren’t rolled up and tossed in a plastic bag. Elegance ruled the day.
The following is a piece I wrote some time ago on the subject:
Another “normal” book I read for a girl that age (although this kind of normal meant it would be banned in certain communities after 1980) was Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret. The collective adolescent angst of every girl I knew could be summed up in lines such as: “I wore my brown loafers without socks. My mother thought that was dumb.”
The scene when Margaret goes to buy her first bra is somehow etched in my memory because shopping then was so different. I once wrote an essay about all the small (and large) Manhattan shops my mother took me to. What stands out is Melnikoff’s, where I bought camp gear as a teenager around Margaret’s age. The wood was polished blond, the cases had sliding glass, and the lighting was fluorescent. Most importantly, the store was intimate, so you did not get overwhelmed. Down York Avenue was the “Bazooka store” where my friends and I stocked up on Mary Janes and Goldenburg’s Peanut Chews.
Shopping always meant lunch and when my mother took me to Bloomingdale’s we ate at Burger Heaven (which may have been the Beef Burger back then). A burger, Coke and fries. Shopping was an event, a day-long affair in stores that were gently lit and very quiet…