It looks wrong as a yellow mop bucket on the main floor at Bergdorf Goodman. Or a bottle of Windex and a dusty pink cloth should be left on a glass pebbled table next to two handbags. It's like meeting a teacher outside of school, or walking into a movie theater lit up by overhead lights. There is a feeling that you are not supposed to see this now.
However, Bergdorf Goodman's theme this holiday season—there's a theme every year, which dictates the famous Window Decorations - is "magic in the making". And this is how Bergdorf Goodman magic is made before the doors open. It's 9:47 a.m., and stains are being cleaned from the marble floors and display counters. There's no music playing yet, which means the white noise of the handbag security tags is still audible: a constant clicking that can't be heard once it's been identified.
Or at 9:24 a.m. in the gilded salon, where pieces, having been locked overnight in cupboards, are unpacked from soft-beige crates. You're allowed to know some of these safes, like three cabinets almost touching the ceiling of a narrow back office, behind a door wrapped in holiday sales incentives for Bergdorf employees. (Sell $75,000 worth of one European luxury brand, and win $8,550 worth of watch from that brand.) The other safeties are secrets, which are essential when the jewelry currently for sale hits $1.6 million.
Or 10 minutes before opening, and small lines form in front of the entrances. Outside a revolving door on 58th Street, a blond septuagenarian in a black hat looks inside and sucks a cigarette. She has lived on Park Avenue for 47 years, she said, but also lives "in France and in many places, as we Greeks do". She came to shop from Saint Laurent and meet friends for lunch.
The first few people in the door move in with purpose and experience. They are not here at 10 am to surf. So why are they here? What brings anyone in 2022 through the doors of walking shops generallyRaped by the convenience of online shopping?
The obvious answer is that Bergdorf Goodman is not like other stores. There is only one, extravagantly designed and expensively stocked, exclusive to New York City. It's a century old, but it's still an integral part of the news and popular culture.
In the documentary released last week by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, a friend of the Duchess specified that she learned of the affair in 2016 during their regular tea and champagne date at Bergdorf Goodman. (There was also 2013 documentary about the store.) In 2019, when writer E I deniedthe claim that this happened in Bergdorf Goodman was Important This is how the media told the story.
The less obvious answer to why people shop here, get swamped after a day in the store, arrive before opening and stay until after closing — 10 hours and 32 minutes meandering through back rooms and sales floors — is that Bergdorf Goodmann is a place where shoppers are rarely told, From a store policy perspective, no.
later that day. ...
Here are two things sold to shoppers during the first two and a half hours of operation on Bergdorf Goodman Street level: a black leather no-logo tote messenger bag from Akris ($1,590) and a pair of diamond teardrop earrings from Verdura ($33,500), which its buyer planned to wear. Sky blue Oscar de la Renta gown.
Several floors up, more orders were prepared for delivery to Manhattan residences. One included five jackets and jackets (from Dior, Alaïa, and Fendi) totaling just under $10,000. The customer also bought some trinkets.
Christmas is serious business at Bergdorf Goodman. By the end of the day, a company representative said, about 800 ornaments will be sold in stores, or roughly 90 per hour. (The store did not provide a daily number of customers. The Neiman Marcus Group, which owns Bergdorf Goodman, is a private company.)
Out of sight from shoppers looking for Santa Claus crystal heads or (now sold out) miniature glass displays of French onion soup—off the shelves of inedible gingerbread houses for $1,500, a price in line with what a New Yorker might do for a coworker in The Room Pay the Monthly Rent - A woman named Teresa Herbert was wrapping gifts bought in the decorating department.
Ms. Herbert spent her shift meticulously peeling away white tissue paper and turning them into silver boxes. Then she wrapped the boxes in purple bows, using five strands of ribbon, and tied them so that if the bows were crushed in transit, she could still recover with some light massage.
She estimated that by the end of her shift she would have wound up about 50 presents. The wall behind her station was covered with schedules, thank-you cards, sticky notes, and cardboard illustrations of comic book characters drawn by a colleague. Ms. Herbert has been working at Bergdorf Goodman since 1999, she said, on and off in various roles.
"I don't even put away my Christmas presents," she said, laughing. "And to the bags."
Tucked in the freight section, Ms. Herbert falls into the category of Bergdorf Goodman employees who don't spend much time with customers. They wander into the offices and warehouses, as signs remind them that Everybody Water, a brand of bottled water, is not for everyone, but only for customers.
On the other end of that spectrum are employees like Jeffrey Delgado, whose client relationships have become part of his wardrobe. Every day he wears stacks of beaded bracelets given to him by the people he served at BG Restaurant, on the seventh floor, a bustling downtown brunch destination known for chopped salad and people-watching.
When I entered the kitchenette, the chef was transferring the lobster soup from a large bowl into a smaller one.
the master. Delgado offered a round on his wrists. "Everyone has a different story," he said. “This one with a whale tail came from a lady who was on her way to Venice. She was saying, 'I have a very special one at my house in Hawaii. I'll be back in a month, and I'll get it.'”
That day, he wore 27 bracelets, but he had more at home, he said, and some he fancy wearing daily. He said a customer from Mexico gave him a Balenciaga bracelet for his birthday, and told him to open it when he got home.
These relationships are not rare. Bergdorf Goodman has a storied personal shopping service. Outside the restaurant are framed letters from Jacqueline Kennedy to her shopper, sent before JFK opened. (The bowler hat Halston wore on the day her husband was murdered is believed to have been purchased from Bergdorf Goodman.) reputation to tell the truth.
That afternoon, stylist Jane Hay Edwards was greeting a client, Christina Wallach, in a luxurious fourth-floor dressing room. After meeting her a year ago, Ms. Wallach and Mrs. Edwards became a fast friend. In October, Ms. Wallach took mrs. Edwards to a Bulgari party at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. "My husband doesn't like that kind of thing," Mrs. Wallach said.
Ms. Edwards had pulled a number of jackets and shirts from Loewe and Givenchy, among others, for Mrs. Wallach's consideration. She said she was preparing for a trip to Asia and didn't have time to shop herself.
said the lady. Wallach, who describes herself as a former rock singer. She met her husband, who worked as a consultant for Booz Allen, while she was singing in a hotel in Malaysia. The couple lives in Pennsylvania, but they have an apartment in Chelsea, where Miss. Edwards also visited. “It's beautiful, three floors, and at the top is a jacuzzi,” said the lady. It requires a winch to be installed, Edwards said.
Ms. Wallach, who ordered a plate of roast chicken to her dressing room, said she did not "like to bother anyone, and I like to have my own place".
"I don't usually want to hang out like that," she said, "but I didn't have time to eat."
Even later
Staff here are encouraged to never say no, and so a stylist named Yawen Gao ends up in the sixth-floor fitting room, slipping herself into a pair of Schiaparelli shoes not available to the public.
Last year, Schiaparelli opened a store at Bergdorf Goodman, her first store in the US selling the brand's surreal clothing and anatomical accessories, such as a leather bag clipped with a pierced nose.
For his Fall 2021 collection, Daniel Rosebery, Artistic Director of Schiaparelli, designed tall black platform boots with sculpted gold toes. Director Janicza Bravo A shorter version to the Met Gala, but it was not produced for sale. Ms. Gao wanted them anyway. Faisal Hassan, a hairstylist from Bergdorf and her friend, made it happen.
It took about nine months, a trip to the Schiaparelli Place Vendôme headquarters in Paris and the lady's measurements. Gao's feet, but at last, behold, she sheds her amphibian-like Avafav."monsterPatent leather shoes for Schiaparellis' self-promotion, which she says cost her about $7,000.
Except nothing is perfect, and the new shoes didn't even slide down her thighs. It's okay, sir. Well said, they can be subjected to professional stretching. Ms. Gao still manages to stand up to them; Usually 5-foot-1, the shoes make it over six feet tall.
"It's much higher than I imagined," said the lady. Gao said, despite being warned by Mr. Gao. Hassan and Schiaparelli. "They were like, 'Oh, this is dangerous, you could fall, you could get injured.'"
However, with the sun setting implausibly early—and Bergdorf Goodman passing its usually busiest time, between 4 and 5 p.m.—it wasn't just fashion collectors with country houses full of Simone Rocha and other avant-garde runway pieces shopping for shoes.
By 5:30 p.m., the company representative said, the store had sold 66 pairs of Chanel shoes, which start at around $850 for ballerina flats. (By 6:30 p.m., the waiter at the restaurant said he had sold about 76 espresso martinis at $21 each, and I wondered if some correlation could be shown over time.)
Laura Zazzalo, who was in New York to visit her son at Juilliard — she lives in Las Vegas and New Orleans — tried on pairs of beaded René Caovilla heels, and they came down to about $1,000. She shorts in gray Adidas track pants to take a few steps.
Ms. Zazzallo briefly considered wearing it with a Balmain lambskin skirt to the chest her son would take to the next night.
"It may be too much," said the lady. Zazzallo, who is interested in developing a reality show about plastic surgery consultations.
Waiting for sales associates to return in a different size, I watched as one man—one of many waiting on couches for their buddies to finish shopping—pulled puffs of smoke from vaping into his Gucci hoodie. Ms. Zazzalo brazenly flashes the electronic cigarette hidden in the sleeve of his hooded jacket. "My son taught me that trick," she said.
I wasn't convinced that vaping shoppers would actually be reprimanded if caught. Bergdorf Goodman is a place where leashed dogs are welcome and stranded customers are served champagne.
At 7pm they weren't even told the shop was closed. There was no announcement over the loudspeakers. The music did not turn off. There's no disapproving of customers, nice or otherwise, who are still shopping, said Christopher O'Keefe, the store's director of loss prevention.
outside, while mr. O'Keefe was locking the outer doors, and a few people tried to get in. Most of them left when they realized what was going on. One woman did not.
"Is it closed?" she asked.
"Yes, we close at 7," mr. O'Keefe said.
"Is it already 7?"
"Yes, it's 7."
"Oh."
"Is there something specific you're looking for?"
"I just want to look at my Valentino bag."
He opened the door for her.
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