My grandmother had two great loves: my grandfather and the department store Lord & Taylor. Every time we passed the retail palace — either in Midtown Manhattan or on Long Island, where she lived — she would blow a kiss in its direction. “ Mi amor !” she’d proclaim when someone uttered its name.
She shopped there, ate there (delicate tea sandwiches and tart, creamy frozen yogurt) and socialized there. She may have preferred the bathrooms at Bergdorf’s, the designer duds at Bloomie’s, but Lord & Taylor was her place . “If I could have married a store, I would have married Lord & Taylor,” she would tell me in her native Spanish.
I’d laugh and tell her she was “ loca .” My grandmother’s ardor may have been extreme, but I understand it better after reading Julie Satow’s new book, “ When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion ” (Double Day, out Tuesday). As Satow tells it, the 20th-century department store — whether in New York City, San Francisco or Main Street USA — offered American women more than shopping.
It was a safe haven, a playground and even a place of empowerment: a ladies’ paradise where women could congregate, experiment, and even earn a living away from men. “These establishments were truly female-centric worlds,” Satow writes, “where women were freed from many of the societal constraints they faced outside the store.” Satow mentions many women in her incisive history, including mannequi.
