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Charm of department stores is vanishingBy SANDRA THOMPSON © St. Petersburg Times, published August 26, 2000 I was in Saks on Tuesday afternoon between cloudbursts, not a top day for shopping -- weekday, weather, August. I had a mission that involved a tedious adjustment from another WestShore Plaza store near Saks, so I parked in the garage on the interstate side of Saks and walked through Saks. I do this whenever I can -- park at Saks and go someplace else. Or make up an excuse (usually 30 percent off the marked-down-price sales) to go there. Tuesday I walked through hosiery and handbags and hair ornaments and past the cosmetics counters -- not only the usual names but also Bobbi Brown, Prairie, Kiehl's. I do this for a reason. Saks is the last real department store -- or as close as we can get to it in Tampa -- though in this case, we're in step with the rest of the country. Real department stores have disappeared. The New York Times ran a story last week on the upscaling of Fifth Avenue with a photo of the old Bonwit Teller. Remember the Bonwit bag -- festooned with violets? Remember the old B. Altman and its restaurant, Charleston Gardens, with wallpaper like a drawing out of Green Mansions and waitresses in black dresses with white aprons who served tea? Or the old Bloomingdale's with its roped-off designer rooms, more beautiful than anything in the Met? Or in Chicago, where I grew up, Marshall Fields, which at Christmas had a tree that seemed to rival the height of the John Hancock building? A department store was, for women, a place of beauty and comfort. In New York, my store was Bloomingdale's. It was gorgeous; it had a huge women's room with some comfortable chairs and a mega phone bank outside. There was always a place to eat -- from a quickie ladies' lunch counter to, as the clientele changed, a health food bar. When I found out I was pregnant with my daughter, I called my then-husband from that phone bank. Today we hear department stores are in financial trouble. This is no surprise. Department stores have forgotten what they are. A couple of months ago I was in Dillard's in WestShore, and the dressing room floor was filthy, the walls had holes in them, there was only one hook on which to hang clothes and no chair. It took forever to find a sales clerk, as I peered over the crowded maze of clothing displays. Department stores are no longer beautiful, their ladies' rooms are unkempt, dressing rooms are cramped and ugly (often less nice than at Target, really), there is no service and no place even to get a soda or mineral water. Only at Saks is there any semblance of what was. The store is small but sophisticated, the ladies' room is bright and clean and has a couple of chairs; the individual stalls have floor-to-ceiling louvered doors. The dressing rooms are wonderful -- spacious, monochromatic with three-way mirrors, comfortable chairs, a platform to stand on if you need to have something hemmed. A seamstress to hem it. A friend of mine went to Saks with a hand-me-down -- a cashmere sweater with a mink collar. She told the first saleswoman she saw what she wanted: a new black cashmere sweater and the collar sewn onto it. The saleswoman took her in hand; mission accomplished. Tuesday, I swung through, stopping to pick up some Saks brand trouser socks, $6 a pair; they were out of them all last winter. The saleswoman was helping a South American mother and daughter with two babies. A young blond woman stood behind me, holding three Kate Spade bags. The older woman was opening a Saks charge account. I tried to do that when the store opened in Tampa almost two years ago. "How would you like your name to read? Ms? Mrs?" the saleswoman asked me. "You can have Princess," she said. "Or Marquesa." Alas, I was neither, but every once in a while, it's nice to be treated like one. - Sandra Thompson is a writer who lives in Tampa. City Life appears on Saturdays.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
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