The department store was a product of the 19th century and became a very important institution as America went into the 20th century. It provided show places in developing towns like Terre Haute, Sacramento, and Dallas.
I love to sell, to visualize something for someone and make them see it.
I thought: 'It would be great to create a series of clothes that looked like that tree.' Clothes that gave you the green of the leaf and the warm brown of the underside of that leaf and the vanilla colored blossom.
Other than things like toothpaste, I don't buy anything that isn't sold to me.
What we learned was that the collective glamour of a specialty store could sell a lot of merchandise.
It ought to be self-evident common sense that service is important to sales. But it's not.
