{"id":1909,"date":"2024-06-02T09:03:01","date_gmt":"2024-06-02T09:03:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ventil.rs\/blog\/business\/they-revolutionized-shopping-with-tea-sandwiches-on-the-side\/"},"modified":"2024-06-02T09:03:01","modified_gmt":"2024-06-02T09:03:01","slug":"they-revolutionized-shopping-with-tea-sandwiches-on-the-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ventil.rs\/blog\/business\/they-revolutionized-shopping-with-tea-sandwiches-on-the-side\/","title":{"rendered":"They Revolutionized Shopping, With Tea Sandwiches on the Side"},"content":{"rendered":"


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WHEN WOMEN RAN FIFTH AVENUE: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion,<\/strong> by Julie Satow<\/p>\n

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In 1980, Donald J. Trump made the front page of The New York Times after assaulting a pair of scantily clad women at a Fifth Avenue department store<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That the women were made of stone and were attached to the building of Bonwit Teller, in the process of being razed and replaced by Trump Tower<\/a>, was of little comfort to the trustees at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which had been promised these Art Deco bas-relief beauties \u2014 long hovering over pedestrians, now shattered.<\/p>\n

The sculptures\u2019 significance was allegorical as well as architectural: Department stores, though erected mostly by men, have always been feminine domains. \u201cThe Ladies\u2019 Paradise\u201d is the English title of \u00c9mile Zola\u2019s 1883 novel, set at a store modeled after<\/a> Le Bon March\u00e9, still standing<\/a> in Paris despite the ravages of e-commerce. Patricia Highsmith framed her 1952 lesbian romance \u201cThe Price of Salt\u201d at the fictional Frankenberg\u2019s, based on Bloomingdale\u2019s<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now Julie Satow has written a group biography of the department-store doyennes who ran the show \u2014 and these places in their heyday really were a form of theater<\/a> \u2014 for the male founders and owners whose names adorned the facades.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n