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

In 1964, Geraldine Stutz met and fell in love with British art dealer David Gibbs. Geraldine had long attributed her lack of romantic success to her strict Catholic upbringing, but she also resented the patriarchal attitudes of men who saw her only as either a sex object or competition at work. She was immediately attracted to David, who quickly divorced his wife in order to marry Geraldine. The couple were married in 1965, and soon became fixtures among New York City’s fashionable elite. They divorced 12 years later, and Geraldine remained unmarried for the rest of her life.

Despite her increasingly rarified social status and influence, Geraldine still wanted Bendel to appeal to a youthful, avant-garde crowd. She hired the artist Robert Currie to transform Bendel’s window displays into so-called “street theater,” elaborate tableaus that changed weekly and drew crowds at their unveiling. The film director Joel Schumacher also got his start as a Bendel artist, and introduced Geraldine to the designer Stephen Burrows, whose clinging dress helped define the fashion of the 1970s. Burrows was the first of many designers to sign an exclusivity contract with Bendel only to abandon the store once they achieved success. The department store Bergdorf Goodman actively encouraged designers to break exclusivity contracts with Bendel. Although the lack of exclusivity hurt, Geraldine’s personal connections reified Bendel’s reputation as the hippest department store in New York.

In the early 1960s, Henri Bendel buyer Jean Rosenberg began a weekly open call for designers, known as the Friday Morning Lineup. Young designers, jewelry makers, hatmakers, home goods creators, and textile makers lined up outside the store for the chance to pitch their designs to Jean and the other Bendel buyers, who heard up to ten pitches an hour. Jean and Bendel executives, including Geraldine Stutz, believed that bringing in new designers to make exclusive products for the store was essential in distinguishing Bendel from its competitors. The Friday Morning Lineup was the antithesis of the increasingly consolidated retail industry: as department store corporations got larger, Bendel’s practice focused on bringing small designers without capital into the public eye. Designers discovered through the Friday Morning Lineups included Mira de Moss and Carlos Falchi. In later years, institutions like Paper Magazine tried to replicate the idea, bringing designers to a mobile home in Union Square to pitch new designs. Lacking Jean and Geraldine’s unique eye, however, these replications largely failed.

In 1973, Maxey Jarman was ousted as president of the retail conglomerate that owned Bendel. As the new leadership began to sell off smaller businesses, Geraldine Stutz was granted right of first refusal in the selling of Bendel, giving her the ability to buy the store herself rather than have it sold. In 1980, Genesco announced plans to sell the store and gave Geraldine 30 days to match the offer. Along with investment banker Linda Beltramini, Geraldine raised $8 million to buy the store, becoming the first female owner of a major department store.

While her competitors were expanding in the suburbs, Geraldine insisted that the Bendel look was not marketable outside of New York. Rather than opening branches in the suburbs, she developed an extensive catalog business which sold Bendel’s gifts and small goods to a larger market. Despite this success, Bendel could not compete with the growing mall culture of the 1980s, and in 1985 Geraldine’s partners moved to sell the store. Because she could not buy her partners out, Geraldine agreed to sell to Leslie Wexner, whose company owned popular brands such as the Limited and Victoria’s Secret.

Despite promises to the contrary, Wexner began to make changes to Henri Bendel immediately. He closed the profitable catalog division and brought in consultants to update the store without Geraldine’s approval. His sexist manner caused many female executives to leave the store, and in ten months, he never responded to a message from Geraldine. In 1986, less than a year after Wexner bought Henri Bendel, Geraldine sold her ownership shares and left the store, never to return.

Geraldine Stutz died in 2005. Henri Bendel was never profitable after Wexner bought the company. After downsizing significantly and ceasing to sell clothing, Bendel closed in 2019, the same year that Lord & Taylor sold its flagship store to WeWork. In 2021, Lord & Taylor closed all retail locations, transitioning to an online-only model. Satow speculates that, although they might mourn the loss of their grand department stores, Hortense Odlum, Dorothy Shaver, and Geraldine Stutz would celebrate the democratization of fashion in 21st-century America, pointing to online retailers like Etsy as evidence that anyone can build a career in design.