War is hell, someone once said, but not on North Michigan Avenue this weekend where, as the Battle of the Big Stores raged on, Bloomingdale`s laid down its opening barrage and a good time was had by most.
”This is the most spectacular store we`ve ever done,” said Bloomingdale`s chairman and chief executive officer Marvin Traub, surveying the scene from a fourth-floor perch. ”Everyone worked very hard. We`re very excited. Chicago is a marvelous city and we wanted to do this marvelously.”
Amid the odor of a thousand mingling perfumes, about 3,400 people, who paid $225 a ticket, crowded onto the store`s six floors at 900 N. Michigan Av. Friday night to see designer Karl Lagerfeld, a French haute couture fashion show and torch singer Karen Akers in a replica of Harlem`s legendary Cotton Club. The black-tie benefit raised about $450,000 for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
With 10 bands, 30 bars, and a 501-person crew to serve food at 18 buffets, the cost of the Bloomingdale`s party was expected to match the $250,000 spent two weeks ago by Marshall Field & Co. That gathering, attended by 1,200 people, celebrated the $10 million renovation of Field`s Water Tower Store and raised $150,000 for the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
First person through the doors at Bloomingdale`s was longtime Gold Coast resident Hanchen Stern in a black-and-gold brocade gown. Recovering from open- heart surgery 16 days ago, she was pushed in a wheelchair by her son, Gardner Stern Jr. ”I wouldn`t miss this for the world,” she said.
The event, a hot ticket for some time, sent rivers of people flowing through the store.
”Good food, great entertainment, a great event-we have all the ingredients for a great party,” chairman Traub said, as guests began picking at 24,000 hors d`oeuvres, 1,000 pounds of tenderloin, 3,600 lobster tails and 6,000 dessert pastries. Bars held 60 cases of champagne, 75 cases of liquor and 75 cases of white wine.
It was a night to be impressed. At the front door, four trumpeters greeted party-goers who arrived amidst klieg lights and expanses of red carpet. Inside, waiters passed silver trays with fluted glasses of ”Bloomie`s Blush,” a champagne concoction invented for the occasion by caterer George Jewell to toast ”Bloomie`s,” as the retailer is known in New York and eight other states.
Upper floors were awash in flowers, 1,607 roses and 399 white orchids.
To snare the benefit for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, co-chairs Sara Chaffetz and Mary Kay Eyerman began courting Traub a year ago. Last spring, they sealed a pact after a Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert at New York`s Carnegie Hall.
With Traub overseeing such details as food (”he likes fork food and sitting down,” Chaffetz noted) the orchestra`s women`s association set out to draw a crowd. In mid-July volunteers marched into the basement of Orchestra Hall with parchment paper, Glu-Stix and magic markers. Temperatures soared past 100 degrees. Stamps melted off envelopes. But in 10 days workers folded, glued, addressed, stamped and mailed 10,413 invitations. The party sold out in late August. About 250 checks, received after that, had to be returned.
”Everything about this party was fun, except sending that money back,”
Chaffetz said last week, in an interview over cinnamon toast and tea at the Mayfair Regent Hotel. ”That really hurt.”
About 750 guests flew to Chicago ”from all over the United States and Canada,” noted co-chair Eyerman. Among them: Jewelry designer Angela Cummings; Carla Fendi, mother of the five Fendi fashion sisters; designer Isaac Mizrahi; shoe magnate Massimo Ferragamo; Estee Lauder`s son Leonard, now head of his mother`s cosmetics and perfume empire; and onetime Chicagoan Georgette Mosbacher, who recently bought La Prairie, Inc., a Swiss skin-care concern.
Mosbacher came, her press agent noted, ”fresh from dinner with George and Barbara Bush and her husband, Robert, who is financial planner for Bush`s presidential campaign.”
Not everyone in the crowd was reverent. Though Field`s chief executive officer Philip Miller declined an invitation, a battalion of fans, a group known as ”Phil`s Army,” declared their allegiance in what has become known as ”Store Wars” by wearing the red silk Charvet bow ties given to guests at the recent Field`s Water Tower party.
”I`m not sure I want to like it, but I love it,” noted retired broadcaster and banker Norman Ross, speaking of the evening. Quipped internist Dr. Jerry Strauss: ”We`ve been invited to an opening of Woolworth`s, but we have to go to two laundromats before that.”
Designer Lagerfeld, the guest of honor, arrived at the last moment. On Friday morning, he missed his Concorde flight, which was to have whisked him from Paris to New York by breakfast-time so he could be in Chicago for lunch. Blaming Paris traffic, he arrived on a regular Air France flight about 6 p.m. and rushed by cab to his hotel to change.
Others also had transportation problems. Hat-maker Mary Lou Maher paid $9 to take a cab to the store from her home on nearby North State Parkway. Others noted that, at opening time, cement mixers were still pouring a sidewalk on East Walton Street.
Inside, many ”made do” with the crowded conditions. Brenna and Lee Freeman tucked themselves comfortably into Bloomingdale`s bed department, pulling up a side table on which to spread dinner. ”Doesn`t everyone eat dinner in bed?” Brenna asked.
To image-consultant Paul Glick, the ”finest sight of the evening” was a pair of 6.5-carat canary-yellow diamond earrings, dangling from the ears of television talk-show host Oprah Winfrey.
”I like that there are no sales people and no charge cards taken tonight,” observed James O`Connor, chief executive officer of Commonwealth Edison. Brian McMahon, general manager of Bloomingdale`s first store in the Midwest, said the it will be staffed by people who will earn only commissions, no salary, a first for the 17-store chain and a policy believed to improve customer service. Overseeing the store`s 10 escalators was a maintenance team from Moline-based Montgomery Elevator Co. All wore black-tie.
”If it`s done by Bloomie`s, it`s on New York scale,” said Town & Country magazine publisher Fred Jackson. ”They don`t spare a thing. Retailing as theater is an integral part of the marketing process.”
Few stars of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra were in attendance. Georg Solti was not due in from London until later in the weekend, but his smiling face greeted guests from 20 video monitors playing during a WTTW-Ch. 11 broadcast during last year`s celebration of the maestro`s 75th birthday. On Friday night, the orchestra itself was playing in Peoria.
The major show-biz attraction of the evening was Karen Akers, recently described by the New York Times as ”the quintessential cabaret singer of the moment.” Daughter of an Austrian count, she was reared in Manhattan, but lived in Lake Bluff briefly in the late 1960s after she married corporate attorney James Akers.
For most, the night was a time to see-and be seen. ”Basically people go to these parties for two reasons. They want to see the store and they want to see the people,” said co-chair Chaffetz. ”That`s simply the place to be that night. How can you tell your friends, `No, I didn`t make it`?”
Conversation topics included such Bloomingdale`s exotica as two spas for women, one for men, the Midwest`s first Petrossian Rendez-Vous restaurant and a main-floor aisle decorated in black-and-white checkerboard and called
”Broadway.”
Most packed place was the central atrium during a fashion show featuring Lagerfeld, Claude Montana, Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Lacroix. Seats for 650 people were set up on the main floor facing a stage that covered a stairway to what will be the complex`s movie theaters.
By then, guests were finishing the last of the evening`s canapes: bundles of duck with chutney and tied with bands of leek, roquefort strawberries and fresh figs stuffed with pate de fois gras and baby lamb chops topped with herbed goat cheese.
Later, the place was jumping with such acts as Brian Paul, Sonida de Sol and Franz Benteler`s Royal Strings quartet. Upstairs, Koko Taylor and Ghalib Ghallab also played the Cotton Club, and the Dick Kress Big Band played on the fourth floor.
”That was one of Marvin Traub`s requests,” said co-chair Chaffetz. ”He wanted a band he could dance to.”
