When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion

“Hortense embraced her role as a homemaker. ‘I loved caring for my baby and doing my housework. It gave me tremendous satisfaction to know that as my husband was doing his job well, I was helping him by doing mine well,’ she wrote years later in her autobiography.”

Hortense Odlum’s participation in the business of Bonwit Teller distinguished her from many women of her day, who were still fighting to escape the expectation that they prioritize being a wife and mother over their own careers. This passage foreshadows Hortense’s public regret over her involvement in department store business later in her life following the dissolution of her marriage.

“‘Mr. Reyburn—the president. You know, the president of Lord & Taylor?’

Dorothy had never asked what her mother’s cousin did for a living, but she was delighted when she found out.”

Although the text primarily focuses on the ways in which department stores allowed women to exercise independent power, Satow is careful to acknowledge the network of racial, economic, and social privilege and connections that allowed these women to flourish. This passage shows that Dorothy Shaver’s family connections to Lord & Taylor granted her access to an established business when she was new to the city.

“Opening in the former Confederate capital, a city in the midst of instituting prejudicial and discriminatory Jim Crow laws, where gerrymandering was forcing the erasure of its majority-Black political district […] the store was a monumental achievement.”

Satow structures her book around three central figures with interstitial interludes that nuance the primary narrative and expand the scope beyond New York City. Highlighting Maggie Lena Walker’s efforts to open a department store for Black citizens in Richmond, Virginia allows Satow to explore the racial violence that dominated early 20th-century America and acknowledge the racism and infrastructural bias that undergird the wealth and luxury at the heart of the main narrative. 

“These activists, many of whom were women and suffragists, spread the narrative that saleswomen were overworked and underpaid and that corrupt, profit-maximizing department stores were coercing them into prostitution and lives of crime and were responsible for fostering a morality crisis in American cities.”

This passage positions department stores as the focus of moral panics about women in the workplace, highlighting the tension inherent in The Changing Roles of Women in 20th-Century America. Although Satow acknowledges the pervasive worry that working in department stores left women vulnerable to financial and physical exploitation, she argues that entering the workforce was a net positive for women’s rights.

“‘Is it necessary for you to be gainfully employed?’ asked Dean George W. Mullins, addressing the graduating class of the all-women’s Barnard College in 1931. ‘If not, perhaps the greatest service that you can render to the community and to the nation at this time, when countless thousands are out of work, is to have the courage to refuse work for gain.’”

This passage demonstrates the extent to which women have historically been asked to sacrifice their own ambitions for the good of their families and communities. The fact that the Dean of a women’s college would encourage graduates not to work reflects the fear that working women represented a threat taking jobs from men struggling to support their families.

“‘I started at $4 a week when I was sixteen, and now I am twenty-eight. […] I am still young enough to marry should I wish.’ For young, ambitious women such as herself, Bessie assured readers, they couldn’t do much better than apply for a job at a department store.”

This passage continues to highlight the novel’s thematic interest in the changing roles of women in the 20th century. For Bessie Harrison, building an independent career was antithetical to traditional expectations of women as wives and mothers. This attitude contrasts the modern expectation that women can build and excel in professional careers while having families.

“Bonwit Teller doubled down on the inexperience of its new female president, touting Hortense’s ‘fresh take’ on business. ‘Let’s be unprofessional and do things that were never done before,’ that ad proclaimed. ‘Let’s be feminine and follow our hunches.’”

During her time as the President of Bonwit Teller, Hortense took advantage of the public’s prejudices against women in order to distinguish their brand. The repetition of the phrase “let’s be” in this ad copy creates a sense of solidarity between the leadership of Bonwit Teller and its customer base, highlighting the connection between midcentury assumptions of femininity and professionalism as antithetical.

“Months into the French occupation, Lord & Taylor opened the Designer’s Shop, a boutique within the store that sold solely American designers, the clothing featuring their names prominently sewn into the labels.”

Throughout the book, Satow argues that American fashion and politics were mutually influential in the first half of the 20th century. The Nazi occupation of France led American department stores to break with French designers in favor of lines designed by Americans. Dorothy Shaver’s decision to include designer names on the labels of dresses to promote American designers would eventually become common practice in the industry.

“In the 1940s, when stores could find neither white men nor white women to fill their ranks, some of the country’s major department stores began hiring African Americans in more visible roles. In New York, Lord & Taylor was one of the first, recruiting four Black saleswomen in 1942.”

This passage points to the book’s thematic interest in the disparity of advances in gender equality for Black women. Although white women were employed in department stores from the late 1800s, Black women were only able to join the staff of white-owned department stores when eligible white workers left department stores for more profitable factory jobs.

“Started in 1939, Glamour used the tagline ‘For the girl with a job,’ and its pages reflected readers who, like Geraldine, were young, educated, mostly white, and enthusiastically entering the workforce.”

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the professional roles of women changed dramatically. The expansion of civil rights for women and the entrance of women into the workplace created a new market, which magazines like Glamour sought to target. This passage indicates that, although they influenced fashion for women of all types, fashion magazines were explicitly targeted at women with the social and economic privilege to access education and the freedom to pursue a career outside the home.

“Six months after her retirement, Hortense’s salary was listed at $18,978, or $377,000 in today’s dollars. […] When Holmes was elected president, his salary rose to $50,000, or more than $1 million today.”

This passage highlights the ongoing gender inequalities faced by women like Hortense Odlum even as they built careers in retail. The fact that Hortense’s male successor was paid more than twice her salary suggests that gender inequality remained deeply entrenched in the business world of the early 20th century. Although women like Hortense were allowed to hold positions of leadership, they were not treated or compensated as equals to their male counterparts.

“‘The only career I ever wanted was in the home,’ she said. ‘I was forced to take the job. I worked like a Trojan…the whole thing leaves me cold.’”

Satow’s description of Hortense Odlum’s career suggests that her husband Floyd manipulated her into taking control of Bonwit Teller so that she would be too busy to notice his ongoing affair with aviator Jackie Cochran. This passage supports that narrative, suggesting that Hortense herself felt compelled to take the job, and that she bitterly regretted prioritizing her career over her family.

“That was particularly notable, because lingerie departments rarely hired Black sales staff, on the assumption that white customers would object to Black employees handling their intimates.”

Satow’s interludes often focus on women whose identifies expose them to additional forms of prejudice in addition to misogyny, highlighting the intersectional feminism of the Satow’s narrative lens. Satow implies that Beatrice Fox Auerbach’s understanding of oppression as a Jewish woman pushed her to hire Black women as sales associates in a time when racist and misogynistic prejudices excluded them from many jobs.

“At the height of the Red Scare […] Dorothy gave an expansive speech to the National Conference of Christians and Jews. In it, she rebuked ‘the spreading passion for conformity,’ arguing how ‘conformist thinking has the potential power to destroy all the qualities which have made our country great.’”

This passage further emphasizes the intersection of politics and fashion in Satow’s narrative. Dorothy Shaver used her influence as the president of Lord & Taylor to speak openly against post-war conformity in the same way she advocated for American designers during the war. Her life-long involvement in politics shaped her legacy.

“Geraldine […] said her mentor believed ‘if women are any good, it’s because they are women, not in spite of it.’”

Throughout the book, Satow argues for the tangible benefits of placing women in positions of power. This passage suggests that Geraldine’s success at Henri Bendel was partially due to the enthusiastic support of her mentor Maxey Jarman, who also understood The Benefits of Women in Leadership.

“These low-slung retail destinations, with their homogenous designs and matching signage, offered middle-class white customers a safe, controlled environment where they could easily drive and park, shop and socialize.”

Satow highlights the ways in which post-war prosperity led thousands of white families to leave major cities like New York and Philadelphia for newly built suburbs, and department stores like Lord & Taylor followed. This passage suggests that suburban department stores were appealing to suburbanites for the same reason as the suburbs themselves: they were safe, spacious, and filled with other wealthy white suburbanites.

“Some 80 percent of workers at the discount stores were part-time, earning minimal wages and receiving few benefits. Department stores, faced with shrinking margins and looking for cuts, began reviewing their own pay scales and eyeing their well-trained and typically well-compensated staff.”

In the final section of the book, Satow compares department stores, which allowed women to have well-paid, independent careers, with discount stores, which prominently relied on part-time workers in order to reduce costs. She ultimately argues that competition with discount stores cause department stores to lose the attributes that once made them unique, such as employee benefits and opportunities for growth.

“This new woman would ‘have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to have caught the notion that the youth kick, the youth quake, the youth take-over is a basic fact of this year of grace—and if she wants to be part of the times, she has to be with it in viewpoint.’”

Satow argues that Geraldine Stutz’s tenure at Henri Bendel was defined by her desire to identify and target a specific type of customer. Although the traditional Bendel customer when she took charge was older, Geraldine’s obsession with a youthful, white, thin aesthetic led her to follow the 1960s trendy obsession with youth, with disastrous consequences.

“‘When the fiberglass dummy survived, we figured plastic that didn’t melt in atom blasts could certainly survive hot department store windows,’ said a spokesman for the firm.”

The crucial connections between wartime technology and fashion emerge as an important theme across the book, highlighting The Mutual Influence of Technology and Fashion. This passage demonstrates the exchange of technology between the two industries: when wax models proved too fragile for warm windowfronts, department store owners turned to wartime manufacturers for a solution.

“Once again, the store was rudderless, cycling through an astounding eight different leaders in just nine years. None could achieve what Hortense, and then Mildred, had, and Bonwit Teller once again began to slide into a decline.”

This passage reinforces Satow’s belief in the benefit of having women in leadership positions, especially in retail. The suggestion that eight consecutive male executives could not bring the store back to its former glory indicates that women were better-suited for leadership positions in retail at this time than men.

“‘There were men who regarded me as a sex object and not as a total person, and that made me very angry,’ Geraldine said. ‘Then there were men who were in competition with me, but I found that boring and usually the feeling of competition existed only in very immature men.’”

Satow provides direct quotes from her protagonists to provide insight into the ways in which romantic dynamics between men and women shifted significantly as women’s roles changed throughout the mid-20th century. Geraldine’s personal perspective suggests that while some men maintained dismissive attitudes that reduced women to second-class citizens, others were intimidated by her powerful career and sought to prove their superiority. These dynamics made pursuing romantic relationships difficult for women like Geraldine.

“Ira Neimark was Bergdorf’s president, an experienced hand who had started his career as a bellhop at Bonwit Teller when Hortense Odlum was in charge and attended business school on a scholarship provided by the Polly Tucker book.”

This passage highlights the lasting legacy of female executives like Hortense Odlum. The career of Bergdorf Goodman president Ira Neimark was nurtured by a female executive while his education was funded by a scholarship connected to a promotion designed by a woman and based on a book written by a woman. Long after Odlum left Bonwit Teller, the legacy of her tenure as president had a tangible influence on the American fashion industry.

“The commercial market is consolidating big business. On the other end of the stick is this very lovely world of small, personal businesses that work today out of lofts and cellars.”

The book’s final interlude focuses on Jean Rosenburg, a buyer at Henri Bendel who hosted weekly sessions in which new designers could pitch new products for the store. In this passage, Jean anticipates the modern preference for small business over large conglomerates in shaping culture.