Holidays on Display

The main aisle of Marshall Field & Co., Chicago, circa 1955. (National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution)

Holidays on Display examines the art, industry, and history of holiday display across the United States. Focusing on parading culture and department store retail display, primarily between the 1920s and 1960s, when holiday displays were considered commercial endeavors equally rewarding for the American public, the exhibition showcases numerous photographs, postcards and rendering illustration of parade floats and window displays—including the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and Marshall Field & Company Christmas windows—as well as objects relating to the early creation of these displays.

“Holidays on Display” will be on view at the National Museum of American History through November 2010

Link to Smithsonian Institution
Online Exhibition
Press Realease
Asked and Answered | Holidays on Display

on the closing of Waldenbooks and B. Dalton Bookseller

One of the joys of my childhood was going to Tanglewood Mall on a Saturday afternoon and checking out what was new at Waldenbooks and B. Dalton Bookseller. It’s hard to remember in a post-superstore and internet world how good these stores were, but they actually were decent stores with good selections in their heyday. They were at least as good as a typical Barnes & Noble and Borders, just smaller and lacking the chairs and coffee.

IMO what killed them was the shifting of corporate focus by their parent companies. After Barnes & Noble and Borders took of in the ’90s, both B. Dalton and Waldenbooks became de-facto outlets for their corporate families and started filling the fronts of their stores with worthless bargain book sections: poorly conceived clearance aisles filled with low quality books that should never have been published in the first place. The over-abundance of loss leaders shrunk the traditional book selections to a shadow of their former selves and ruined the two chains’ reputations as sources for quality books.

Even though Barnes & Noble corporate eventually saw the light and integrated the Barnes & Noble search and order capabilities into their B.Dalton mall stores, Borders corporate steadfastly refused to bring Waldenbooks in line with Borders search and order capabilities until Waldenbooks got so small they couldn’t support their own system.

It doesn’t take a retail genius to figure out that the companies were de-emphasizing the mall stores in favor of a larger, more profitable format and that the reduced selection of a modern Waldenbooks and B.Dalton would eventually make they easy to dispose of if the mall business never recovered (and it hasn’t so far).

It’s sad to think of how many small and medium sized cities will now have no new general-interest bookstore thanks to B. Dalton and Waldenbooks’ closures. Danville, Va. and Bluefield, W.Va. immediately come to mind: somewhat isolated cities that don’t have enough college-educated customers to be considered for a book superstore but yet have enough population to support one. Cities like these will be solely at the mercy of Walmart and the like, which only stock books they figure will sell to a mainstream audience and little else.

This is an embarrassing and depressing situation. Why should people in typically sized American cites have to travel 60 miles or more just to buy a non-New York Times bestseller book in person? I just hope that a company like Books-A-Million will step up and bring some essential choice and selection back to these towns.

Robert Henry (Chilly) Childress: 1941-2009

I can't say enough good things about my friend. Chilly was a very special person and I'm going to miss him dearly.

When we worked together at LMW, he was always willing to listen and offer advice and he told some of the funniest and most memorable stories I've ever heard. Even after I left the company and his hours got cut, he would look me up wherever I was and even had a bus driver stop a Valley Metro bus just so he could say hi to me when I was walking down the street! No one would have done that but Chilly; he was that kind of person.

Robert Henry (Chilly) Childress, of Roanoke, Va., the oldest of 12 children was born on October 10, 1941, to the late Isaac H. Childress and Julia M. Millner Childress in Roanoke, Va. After a brief illness he departed this life on Friday, March 13, 2009, at Salem VA Medical Center in Salem, Va. Robert was educated in the Roanoke School District and upon graduation from Lucy Addison High, left to serve for seven years in the United States Army. While stationed in Valley Forge, Pa., he met and married Shirley Coleman on July 31, 1965 and resided in Norristown, Pa. From this union were two children, Denise Michelle and Robert. Chilly worked for many years and was said to have been one of the best bartenders in the North. He had many skills and the last was with LMW Engineering Architecture Surveying Corporation, who stated "he was very diligent in his employment and a philosopher." Robert will be remembered by his son, Robert H. Childress Jr. (Valarie); siblings, Calvin E. Childress, Martha A. Childress, Harry T. (aka Joe) Childress, Roszella Cunningham, Lynwood Perry Childress, Wayne M. Childress (Yolanda), of Roanoke, the Reverend Helen M.C. Jones (John), Theresa L. White, of Norristown, Pa., Julia M. Childress, of Tampa, Fla., Teresa C. McClendon (Rev. Michael) and Timothy E. Childress, of Palm Beach, Fla.; three grandchildren, Troy Childress, Tyler Childress and Tamra Childress, of Norristown, Pa.; two aunts, Martha G. Williams (Bill), of Washington, D.C., and Della Millner, of Roanoke, Va.; a host of relatives, nieces, nephews, cousins and friends; and family friends, Melvin Saunders, James Bryant, Steve Stewart, Nilda Sierra, and Patricia Cooper. He was preceded in death by his parents, Isaac H. (March 1980) and Julia M. Childress (November 1997); daughter, Denise Michelle Childress (August 13, 1999); and brother, Isaac N. Childress (July 1965). Memorial services will be held 4 p.m. on Saturday, March 21, 2009, at Trinity Community Baptist Church, 1814 Carroll Ave., Roanoke. Arrangements by Lotz Funeral Home, Roanoke, Va.

Reviving the memory of his beloved Carolina Circle Mall

Frequent LiveMalls contributor Billy Coore collects memorabilia from the former Carolina Circle Mall. (Greensboro News & Record photo by Neslon Kepley)

The love affair began at a young age, with the cheery music and constant spin of the merry-go-round.

The emotion only grew stronger over time, with trips to the food court, strolls through store aisles and afternoons at the movies.

Even when others fell out of love with Carolina Circle Mall, taking their business and money elsewhere, Billy Coore's devotion remained...

Read more of Lanita Wither's story on Billy Coore at the News & Record website.

Appreciation: Carlin, from straight comic to icon

By JOHN ROGERS

LOS ANGELES (AP) — When he shucked the coat and tie for black T-shirts and jeans, grew his hair long and began to riff about those "Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV," George Carlin became more than just the countercultural comedian.

Carlin, who died Sunday of heart failure at 71, took comedy itself in a whole new direction.

No longer were nightclubs the territory of guys in suits telling harmless mother-in-law jokes.

"He was more than just a comic. His routines became part of the American lexicon," fellow comedian Paul Rodriguez told The Associated Press on Monday. "They came to say a lot about America and its times."

Indeed, when Muhammad Ali was stripped of his world heavyweight boxing championship for refusing induction into the U.S. military, Carlin noted that Ali, who made his living beating people up, had refused service because he opposed the Vietnam War.

"He said, 'No, that's where I draw the line. I'll beat 'em up. But I don't want to kill 'em.' And the government said, 'Well, if you won't kill people, we won't let you beat 'em up.'"

Arguably his most famous routine, though, was simply called "Seven Words."

More than just an outpouring of obscenities, it was — as almost all Carlin routines were — a clever play on the sound and meaning of almost every word Carlin used.

One word in the routine, for example (not one of the offending seven) was what he called "a two-way word," explaining: "You can prick your finger. But don't ... "

"Some people think the routines were all about saying dirty words, but it wasn't about that at all," says Jamie Masada, who as owner of the Laugh Factory comedy clubs knew Carlin for more than 20 years.

"He had a different motivation," Masada continued, "and the motivation was free speech. George believed when he was on stage that was like being in his church and he could say anything he wanted there."

It's only appropriate, then, that Carlin's name is attached to a key U.S. Supreme Court free-speech ruling, albeit one limiting the right.

The 1978 decision, the result of a radio station playing "Seven Words," upheld the government's authority to issue sanctions for broadcasting offensive language during hours when children might be listening.

"So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of," Carlin told the AP earlier this year.

Other than that, he said at the time, he had very little interest in public affairs. He claimed to have not voted in a presidential election in decades.

"I was always out of step," he said. "I left school in ninth grade, I got kicked out of the Air Force, I got kicked out of the choir and the altar boys and summer camp and three schools and I was a pot smoker when I was 13 in the early '50s. I was always a lawbreaker and a kind of outlaw rebel."

One thing he was good at, though, was doing funny voices and making funny faces like his boyhood idol, Danny Kaye.

"When I was 10, 11, I was watching MGM movies with Danny Kaye," he said. "I kind of looked at that and thought, `Gee, I can do that.'"

After a brief pairing with comedian Jack Burns, with whom he would remain friends the rest of his life, Carlin went out on his own in 1962, inspired, Burns said Monday, by a Lenny Bruce show the two saw in Chicago in 1961.

By the end of the 1960s, Carlin had grown his hair long, added a beard that he joked covered his acne and began to embrace the countercultural ethos of the time.

"I finally did the right thing, which was to get in touch with my own real voice, and that made me happy for the first time," he once said.

From there, he would go on to record 23 comedy albums, win four Grammys, do 14 TV specials for HBO, write three best-selling books and appear in several movies. Just last week it was announced that Carlin was being awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

"None of that would have happened if I had remained imprisoned in a suit," Carlin said.

As his humor became more observational, nothing was off-limits, from politics to sports to religion, with war and other atrocities frequent targets.

"The very existence of flame-throwers," he once joked, "proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, `You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, I'm just not close enough to get the job done.'"

At the same time, his humor could be gentle when the moment called for it.

He appeared as Mr. Conductor on the children's show "Shining Time Station" in the 1990s and was the voice of Fillmore, the hippie van, in the popular 2006 children's movie "Cars."

From a nightclub stage, however, his humor could always be expected to be scatological. And although his penchant for funny voices and faces might soften it some, it could still be in your face as he ridiculed God, joked about televising suicides and did things like simply ending a routine with a recitation of every synonym for penis.

"He made us look at things, look at ourselves. You won't find too many comics with the kind of chops to do that," said fellow comedian Tommy Chong. "You're only allowed to do that when you've paid your dues."

And indeed Carlin had. Early in their careers, Burns recalled, the two were so broke they shared a one-room apartment with a pullout bed.

"Two guys lying next to each other for three months. You can bet we made jokes about that," he laughed.

Carlin went on to develop a serious cocaine addiction, and as recently as 2004 he entered rehab to break what he called a dependency on vicodan and wine.

Despite those struggles, Carlin, who suffered the first of several heart attacks when he was only 41, said the coronary artery disease that finally killed him was the result not of drugs but of genetics.

"My father gave me this disease," he told the AP in 2007. "But he also gave me my gift of gab, my sense of humor. So what the ... . It was a good trade-off."

Happy Smurfday!

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — They're turning 50 without a hint of gray.

Just blue. Lots of blue.

The Smurfs are hitting the half-century mark, and Papa Smurf and Smurfette helped kick off a year of celebrations Monday with sarsaparilla juice and — naturally — Smurfberry cake.

The late cartoonist Pierre Culliford — best known by his pen name, "Peyo" — first introduced the tiny blue figures in a comic strip in October 1958. He called them Schtroumpf; they became known worldwide as the Smurfs.

The Smurfs, forest dwellers who live in little white-capped mushroom homes, developed their own "Smurf" language in which nouns and verbs were interchanged.

Their debut on U.S. television in 1981 launched their global rise to stardom and made the Smurfs a household name. A Smurf is a Pitufo in Spanish, a Schlumpf in German, Nam Ching Ling to the Chinese, a Sumafa in Japan and Dardassim in Hebrew.

"I think that if he could see all that has been done with his characters since his death and the success and interest that the Smurfs still attract, he would be very, very, very, very happy and very proud," said Peyo's son, Thierry Culliford.

To mark 50 years of Smurfdom, organizers are planning everything from a 3-D animation feature film expected to be released next year to new comic book collections and a remastered release of the popular 1980s television animated series, Peyo's family said.

Peyo's widow and two children will help kick off a European birthday tour in Brussels. The Smurfs celebration will continue in Paris and Berlin.

The Smurfs also will team up with the UNICEF to promote children's rights and education worldwide, said Yves Willemont of UNICEF Belgium.

"The Smurfs and UNICEF have a lot of values in common — values about joy, happiness and respect," Willemont said. "We also have in common the fact that we are dedicated to the cause of children and to the promotion of every child and the right of every child to survive."

UNICEF and the Smurfs joined forces two years ago to raise the plight of ex-child soldiers in Africa.

Born in Brussels, Peyo worked as a movie projectionist before entering the world of comic strip drawing.

The Smurfs appeared as a supporting cast of characters in Peyo's 1958 "Johan and Pirlouit" cartoon, which was set in the Middle Ages.

The Smurfs quickly grew in popularity and by 1960, the Smurfs had their own comic strip series and. With the help of the Hanna-Barbera Productions, the Smurfs became an animated cartoon in 1981.

Thierry Culliford said the Smurfs promote love and friendship. He said many who grew up watching the Smurfs on TV during the 1980s and 1990s now are parents and want to introduce the Smurfs to their children.

Demand for Smurf stories continues, said Hendrik Coysman, managing director of IMPS, which controls the rights of the Smurf brand worldwide.

"Thousands of fans are asking for more stories and these will be based of course on the fantastic asset that Peyo has left us," Coysman said.

Peyo, who died 15 years ago, "would be very happy if he were here today" to see Papa Smurf, Smurfette, Handy, Jokey and the troop of 96 others celebrate 50 years of Smurfmania, daughter Veronique Culliford said.

Thanks to Baltimore, Air Force 1 still flying

Nike sneaker boasts 25 years of loyal fans

By Tanika White
Baltimore Sun reporter

BALTIMORE - In the 2002 hit "Air Force Ones," the rapper Nelly extolled his love for the sneaker in the song's title: "I need two pair," he drawled. "Give me two pair."

Clearly Nelly is not from Baltimore. If he were, he'd have far more than just two pairs.

Nike is launching a major promotion for the 25th anniversary of its Air Force 1 - a sneaker that Baltimore had a major role in saving and helping to become an urban fashion sensation of the past generation.

In contrast to the product hype often manufactured on Madison Avenue, the sneaker's following grew initially by word of mouth, before the Internet and with little TV advertising. The shoe originated in 1982, when Nike sales were one-15th what they are now and its future endorsement king, Michael Jordan, was still a freshman at the University of North Carolina.

Curiously, the buzz for the Air Force 1 centered in Baltimore, far from the major fashion centers and the only place where the model was sold for a time after it was all but discontinued.

"No city is as important to the Air Force 1 as Baltimore," Nike acknowledged in a booklet it sent to retailers recently for the 25th anniversary promotion. "The city rebirthed the shoe and set in motion a series of events that would change the way sneakers were perceived in the marketplace."

Nelly's two pairs wouldn't suffice for Melvin Bartee, for example. He has amassed at least 100 pairs of the $80 sneakers over the years, their orange boxes stacked to the ceiling in the basement of his East Baltimore home. "I don't even go down there to look for a pair anymore. I just buy new ones," said Bartee, 41, a youth basketball coach at the Cecil-Kirk Recreational Center.

Keith Holly of West Baltimore said he has at least 50 pairs of Air Force 1's. He buys them two at a time, wears them twice, maybe three times, then gives them away.

And even a trans-Atlantic distance couldn't stem Michael Boateng's passion for Air Force 1's. When he attended high school in West Africa, Boateng, now 29, said, "My parents mailed me the new ones when they came out."

While Nike helped shape the modern athletic wear industry with its line named for Jordan, the lesser-known Air Force 1 model has been the Oregon company's biggest seller, footwear expert John Shanley said. The shoe generated roughly $1 billion a year for the company at its peak, about $600 million in more recent years.

"I remember going to the malls at 7 a.m. and kids would be in line for those shoes," said Shanley, a New York-based analyst who covers the athletic wear industry for Susquehanna Financial Group. "There's no other shoe that ever created that kind of thing. Maybe some of the Jordans."

In 1982, Nike introduced the Air Force 1 as a high-performance basketball shoe. Moses Malone, who became the first basketball player to go directly to the pros from high school after declining an offer to play at the University of Maryland, was one of the first to wear the sneakers, starting a fad in urban areas.

"Back then, shoes had a limited run," Nike spokesman KeJuan Wilkins said. "They'd come out and then they'd go away forever."

By 1983, Nike was ready to discontinue the model for newer styles. But three Baltimore-area retailers at the time - Charley Rudo Sports, Cinderella Shoes and Downtown Locker Room - banded together to implore Nike executives to reconsider.

"The shoes were blowing out of my store," recalled Harold Rudo, then the footwear buyer for his father's store, Charley Rudo Sports. "I flew out to [Nike's headquarters in] Portland, Oregon, and met with the second-in-command."

Rudo and cohorts from the other two sporting goods stores persuaded Nike initially to continue selling two styles of Air Force 1's - white with royal blue, and white with chocolate brown - but only in their stores in Baltimore.

The first weekend the sneakers were re-introduced in Baltimore, Rudo said, he sold more than 100 pairs.

"Then, we started popping out new styles, color by color by color by color. We brought out one to two colors a month," said Rudo, who is known even today as "Mr. Shoe." "We were exclusive, the Three Amigos."

In pre-Internet days, word of mouth propelled sneaker-heads along the East Coast to Baltimore for Air Force 1's.

"We had people coming from New York, Washington, D.C.," Rudo said. "They were coming from all over Pennsylvania. They knew we had 'em, and they'd all come running to Baltimore to buy them from us."

Eventually, Nike concluded that Baltimore was on to something. About 10 years after the shoes' exclusive run in Baltimore, the company re-released the Air Force 1 nationally in the mid-1990s.

"This is something that is now on a global level," said Wilkins, the company spokesman. "People in Japan love the Air Force 1. People in Brazil love the Air Force 1. To think that it really started in Baltimore is kind of amazing. ... It has moved from being a performance shoe to a cultural icon."

Until Nike announced a 25th anniversary promotional campaign for the Air Force 1, only a select few were aware of Baltimore's role in popularizing the model early on.

"So often you think of L.A., New York, Chicago for this kind of thing," said Mike May, spokesman for the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association.

While Nike poured millions into promoting its Jordan line, it barely advertised the Air Force 1, lending the sneaker an underground appeal. Like Converse's canvas Chuck Taylors and Adidas' Superstar model, Nike's Air Force 1 became a phenomenon with a clean, simple look. As more colors were added, buyers continued to clamor for the shoe because no matter the outfit, there was an Air Force 1 to go with it.

"You can basically get any color to match your clothes, whatever you feel like wearing," said Boateng of East Baltimore. "I've worn 'em to church. I'll be wearing a blazer and then I'll have on my Air Forces."

Today, there are more than 1,700 different styles of Air Force 1's, although the shoe is essentially the same as in 1982 - unusual for Nike sneakers, even Air Jordans. There are versions in patent leather, multi-colored styles and some designed by graffiti artists. Wealthy rap artists and celebrities often take a pair of Air Force 1's and upgrade the "swoosh" with designer monograms, such as Louis Vuitton's signature LVs.

After-purchase customization of the Air Force 1 has become a cottage industry for some city artists and retailers.

Dwayne Gillard, 27, of West Baltimore, had one of his five pairs of white-on-white Air Force 1's professionally decorated at Mondawmin Mall with "Hundred Grand Federation," the logo for his side business as a rapper.

"You gotta have a pair of Air Force 1's. You put 'em on at night, and I swear you look like your feet are glowing," Gillard said. "Then you gotta have a second pair. The second pair you gotta get somebody to customize 'em for you. The third pair is the backup for that first pair. And the fourth and fifth is for when nobody's selling them no more. I got five right now because I know come May, I'm not gonna be able to find 'em."

Baltimore retailers sometimes struggle to meet demand, said Jeffrey Bowden, a spokesman for DTLR, formerly the Downtown Locker Room, which now operates from Atlanta to Chicago.

"It's absolutely a phenomenon," Bowden said. "It's clearly the Baltimore shoe. There were times there where it was hard for us to keep them in stock, through all sizes, from kids' all the way up to men's.

"That real hard-core demographic, they're like, 'Hey, I need a new pair of Airs,' just because they got a scuff on them. And they've got to have every color when they come out," he said. "I'm even guilty of that. I've had hundreds over the years."

Nike officials can't explain why the shoe has had such a foothold in Baltimore, but they are grateful for the love.

To promote the 25th anniversary version of the Air Force 1 - and the just-released Air Force 25 sneaker - the company built a pricey in-store display at DTLR in Mondawmin Mall, one of the first stores to originally sell the Air Force 1, Nike said.

The display shows players of the past in flight jumpsuits, such as Malone, beside a "second coming" of current stars such as LeBron James and Kobe Bryant, who are promoting the new Air Force 25s.

Local sellers don't expect the relationship to wane anytime soon.

"Twenty years from now ... it's going to be the same thing," said Greg Vaughan, manager of Mondawmin Mall's DTLR and a former salesman at Charley Rudo Sports, one of the three stores that saved the shoe. "I'm watching generations of kids growing right into it."

The Bergen Mall on myspace

LiveMalls fan Jordan Berson sent me a link to his myspace tribute to New Jersey's iconic Bergen Mall. There are lots of great pictures and commentary about the Paramus mall, one of the first large suburban shopping centers in America.

I think if you like this site and LiveMalls, you will love his page.

myspace.com/bergen_mall

Culture at the counter

By Jan Whitaker
originally published in the Boston Globe

JUST AS THEY pioneered modern escalators to carry crowds of shoppers upward, department stores encouraged their customers' social mobility. The big stores grew up with a burgeoning American middle class that they provided with its tastes, habits -- and consumer goods.

As full-service department stores continue to disappear, it becomes clear just what influential organizations they were in shaping the lives of millions.

With concerts, lectures, style forums, art shows, science exhibits, and book festivals, the big stores showed Americans how their lives could be richer and more gratifying. Sometimes employing deadly earnestness and at other times circus-like antics, they caught the public's imagination and sold them an American way of life, complete with gold-rimmed dinner plates, pianos, prom dresses, and engraved invitations.

Along with the goods came lessons on child psychology, galleries hung with oil paintings, symphonies, author teas, and countless other edifying sights and sounds. Salvador Dali designed show windows at Bonwit-Teller; Leopold Stokowski conducted an orchestra at Wanamaker's in Philadelphia; and William James discussed philosophy at Filene's. The Federal Children's Bureau worked with department stores to instruct parents on the health and well-being of infants.

For decades the largest booksellers in many cities were department stores. In 1904, The Wall Street Journal reported that Wanamaker's in Philadelphia ran the largest book shop in the world. Although many early department store books were cheap reprints of first-run editions, their lower prices put books in the hands of a wider spectrum of readers than ever before. Jordan Marsh boasted of a ``colossal book display" in 1897, featuring ``Quo Vadis" selling briskly at half the regular price. The store also claimed to have an ``enormous stock of juvenile books," a true department store merchandise stronghold. Department stores' professional book buyers dominated the American Booksellers Association through much of the 20th century, as well as hosting some of the first author tours and book festivals.

Museums in the 1920s looked to department stores as models. At a style forum at Kaufmann's Department Store in Pittsburgh, Stewart Culin of the Brooklyn Museum declared, ``The department store stands for the greatest influences for culture and taste that exist today in America." The director of the Newark Museum, John Cotton Dana, acknowledged that a first-class department store was more like a good museum than any of the actual museums of 1928. The stores were judged far more skillful at display, less intimidating to the public, and better overall at drawing crowds to view art works and exhibits of modern industrial design. They attracted thousands to symposiums on style, such as Macy's 1927 Art in Trade show that presented a weeklong program of talks by designers, scholars, and museum curators.

Art galleries in the big stores dated back to the late 19th century. Jordan Marsh proclaimed its new 1894 exhibit space had good lighting, perfect for displaying work ``from the studios of Boston's best artists." Local artists were always popular, as were sentimental subjects, but department stores also showed paintings by Picasso, Rosa Bonheur (at Watt & Shand in Lancaster, Pa., in 1908), the ``ashcan school," European cubists, and social realists.

The wonders of science and technology were demonstrated in stores' lighting systems, pneumatic tubes, elevators, and escalators, all of which fascinated the public at a time when most people lacked modern conveniences at home. But the stores also presented natural history exhibits, expositions on how electricity worked, and attractions such as Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis and, later, space suits worn by the first astronauts.

The stores' attractions were free and open to all. Of course department stores are businesses that must focus intently on the bottom line, but they built their fortunes on the notion that as their customers prospered and developed more artistically discriminating tastes, they would buy better merchandise and profits would rise accordingly.

By the 1960s, a large US middle class took it for granted that local department stores were reliable links to the mores, manners, and material accoutrements of mainstream American life. But, despite success as social arbiters, the big stores' high cost of distribution -- due in part to special events and lavish services -- undermined profits. In city after city they closed or were consolidated in buyouts.

The department store represented a historic confluence of merchandising creativity and social aspirations that may be impossible to replace.

Jan Whitaker is author of ``Service & Style: How the American Department Store Fashioned the Middle Class."

Old Cool

Fashion advice you may not want to follow

men.style.com

NEW YORK — Men have been telling one another how to dress for nearly as long as they've been wearing clothes. At least that's the contention of A Rakish History of Men's Wear, an exhibit opening next week at the New York Public Library. We asked curator Paula Baxter for a few notable sources of fashion advice from (way) back in the day.

Il Cortegiano, 1592: "This book advocated that the professional men of Urbino, Italy, only wear black when doing business because it was a way of showing your power—the first time that someone thought to write that down."

Journal des Dames et des Modes, circa 1790: "A French magazine that gave a lot of play to men's fashion. It made observations like, ‘Here comes the silk top hat from England. It's very nice and it's better than what we have.'"

The Whole Art of Dress! Or the Road to Elegance and Fashion, 1830: "There were a few sections on how to do elaborate things with cravats. There were tying styles with names like Mathematical, the Ornamental, and the Waterfall."

Mercure des Salons, circa 1830: "They showed examples of coats that had a ‘wasp waist,' which was cinched in at the waist. That was quite the thing."

Vanity Fair: A Weekly Show of Political, Social, and Literary Wares, late 1800s. "This magazine abhorred dandyism—they thought it was about self-love—and they thought men should keep things simple." Just a bit ahead of its time.

A Rakish History of Men's Wear, September 8-April 7, 2007 at the New York Public Library, Fifth Ave. at 42nd St., NYC, (212) 869-8089, www.nypl.org.

back in the day (1994)

I’m sitting here tonight doing some thinking. I have My Life by Mary J. Blige on the CD player and it’s bringing back a flood memories from 1994.

My life was lot different back then, I guess. Obviously there wasn’t a blog. In fact, in my world there really wasn’t an internet. People communicated online, to be sure, but the ones I knew were these weirdoes named Sid and Doug that were friends of Todd M. and almost never left their dorm room.

I would have been typing this on a 486-DX computer in my sophomore dorm room in Lee Hall at Virginia Tech. Actually, if I remember correctly, I didn’t even have a computer in my dorm because my brother and I didn’t room together like we did freshman year, and he took the computer with him to his new apartment. I eventually got one that year, when my dad bought me a bunch of spare computer peripherals from Montgomery Ward to create what become “FrankenComputer.” It’s a funny story that I’ll tell sometime.

Anyway, instead of commuting to a municipal job, I walked across campus to architecture studio. Kevin was at college in Baltimore and I hung around with Todd M. and Glenn seemingly every day. Nobody was married and only Glenn was seeing somebody, but she was back home in Jersey. We pretty much did the whole typical adolescent hi-jinks thing after class. Not much drinking and no drugs, but pretty much everything else.

I bought my first real stereo equipment that year: a Sony bookshelf stereo with enough bells and whistles to make its own parade float. It never worked correctly (and I eventually had to exchange it for a more useful model), but I really loved that thing. $286.00 on my new American Express. Sears, Mercer Mall, Bluefield, West Virginia. Most expensive thing I’d ever bought back then that wasn’t tuition.

1994 was significant in that I met many of the people who would become my closest friends: those mentioned above, Angie, Derek M., and Doug L. I also started building my CD and sneaker collections that year. Sadly, I still have most of the former and none of the latter. A pair of Air Accel Trainers would certainly fetch a lot more on eBay than a Karyn White CD.

But anyway, 1994 was also significant in my expansion of research on this mall and fashion thing. Before, I was limited to the resources of the occasional newspaper article and whatever I could find at the Franklin County Library. The University Libraries at Virginia Tech were an unbeatable resource of just about anything retail or fashion related, and since my level of socialization at the time was pretty much stuck in geeky teenager mode, I went to the library and read and researched instead of getting drunk, high and laid like college students usually do. What a dumb move. LOL

Okay, maybe it wasn’t the most macho thing I could have done, but I’m still in possession of just about all my brain cells, and my research has resulted in the backbone of my current life as a semi-professional retail pundit, occasional column writer (it’s on its way back) and all around nerdy neighborhood blogger. Y’all dig it, so that’s all that matters

Looking back, I’m heavier and older, but I’m smarter, savvier, smell better (LOL) and I’m a hell of a lot sexier than I used to be. 19 was cool, but I’m looking forward to 31 just about as much.

Which reminds me: does anybody remember what August 30th is?