`Kind of a surprise`
Falk was a Bendel`s shopper years ago. And now-quel miracle!-she runs it. ”It was kind of a surprise,” she said. ”(Wexner) just called me into his office one day, and said, `There`s something I`d like you to think about.` I didn`t have to think very hard.”
She allowed that she had harbored fantasies about someday getting her hands on the Bendel`s operation. ”Being part of the corporation and in the kind of job that I had and being a Bendel shopper, too, I certainly could dream about what my ideal job would be, and this is kind of it,” she said.
”All those things I ever wanted to do, I could do them exactly the way that I want to get them done. It`s a real luxury in today`s world.”
Falk said she developed her taste while growing up in Phoenix. ”I was always reaching for something that cost a little more than I could afford,”
she said, ”and I just had to work that much harder to get it.”
While earning her degree in marketing and business administration at Arizona State University, Falk worked in a local department store. ”As we unpacked the boxes, my friend and I were always critiquing the clothes,” Falk recalled. ”We`d say things like, `This will sell. That won`t.` ”
On the move
From college, Falk joined Bullocks department stores in Los Angeles and then moved on to become associate buyer and divisional vice president for The Broadway/Southern California. She joined The Limited in 1985.
Although her specialty is merchandising, and her background has been almost exclusively in retail clothing, Falk said she doubts that she would become a fashion arbiter. ”I don`t know if I see myself in that role,” she said. ”I do think that our goal as a store is to be the premier place to shop for cutting-edge fashion.
”We tried to rethink what Henri Bendel would have done if he were reinventing the store for the `90s and the 21st Century. There has to be a very personal kind of feeling in shopping. It`s still a very social experience, but it`s very personal, intimate. The store has a very residential feel, not a commercial feel. It`s sophisticated and elegant, but it still is very warm and inviting. It invites you to explore, room by room.”
The milliner behind it
A French-speaking milliner born in 1858 in Lafayette, La., Bendel was the first merchant to bring European fashions to the United States. He built his store on 57th Street into Fashion Headquarters for the nation`s elegant elite during the early years of this century, outfitting stars of stage and screen, introducing the biggest names in French fashions and boosting the careers of such newcomers as Chanel, Lanvin and Molyneux.
Henri Bendel devised the famous brown stripes and the svelte lady with her prancing whippet on the Bendel`s logo. He insisted on the posh
surroundings, the line of exclusive fragrances, the personal service
(delivering big orders by limousine), the absolute authority.
”He was the pioneer of the live fashion show as we know it today,” Falk said. ”He designed a collection of his own every season. He wrote a column for Harper`s Bazaar. He was like the genial dictator of fashion of his day. Whatever he said was in was in. Whatever he said was out was out. And you`d better not be caught wearing it.”
Yet Bendel never crossed the line into pretension. He pronounced his first name ”Henry” and his last ”BEN-del.” He kept the operation small, and so did his most successful successor, Geraldine Stutz, who created the
”Street of Shops” and perpetuated the Bendel`s reputation as mecca for the extremely fashion-conscious.
An eye on detail
After acquiring Bendel`s from Stutz in 1985, Wexner gradually showed signs of pumping the store up into gigantic proportions. Stutz-now retired-apparently objected strenuously and resigned as president shortly after Wexner began exerting his influence. In recent months, he personally has dictated even the tiniest construction details at the three new branches in Chicago, Columbus and Boston.
Some of the Stutz touches that drew chic customers from all over the world began to disappear. Out went the exclusive Sonia Rykiel shop, for example, and in came racks of private-label clothes.
”Stutz took Henri Bendel to its zenith,” says one industry insider.
”Wexner`s expertise is private label and negotiating leases.”
The result is a store that seems almost themed: the Ed Debevic`s or Shaw`s Crab House of fashion retailing, with a now-mythical proprietor, Henri Bendel, just offstage peeking at his preening customers.
Some experts aren`t convinced such an image will be enough to sustain the mystique. ”Wexner bought the ultimate specialty store, whose customer profile is very similar to Nancy Reagan and most of her friends,” said Alan Millstein, editor and publisher of New York`s Fashion Network Report, a newsletter for manufacturers and retailers.
`Anorexic`s paradise`
”Henri Bendel was an anorexic`s paradise,” Millstein remembered. ”The smartest thing Geraldine Stutz did was never open a branch, because that slight woman who is very fashion-conscious and very avant-garde exists only in New York and Beverly Hills. Only on the coasts are they still willing to starve and be fashionable.
”That doesn`t mean Wexner can`t make money with it, but with all the competition surrounding him in Manhattan, they don`t even breathe the
(Bendel`s) name when it comes to fashion. It`s just another name in a mall.”
Falk argues that such regional stereotyping may be outdated. Women all over the country fit into their allotted market niches with few variations, she hints. She also argues that some name designers fled Bendel even before Wexner started acting like he owned the place. ”There had been one store in New York City for a long time,” Falk said, ”and certainly designers look at their avenues of distribution.
”We haven`t looked at the individual cities and said we think there`s a Chicago customer who looks this way and a Boston customer who looks that way,” she added. ”We believe that in each of the cities there is just a very savvy fashion customer who responds to a strong fashion point of view.”
Scouting local talent, too
Although Bendel`s will, as always, carry such items as $8,000-and-up gowns by Scaasi, Bob Mackie and other big names, the store embraces several new designers and has been scouting out talent locally. One Chicago find is Diane Gorgecon, who adds clever decorations to antique men`s blazers and tuxedo jackets.
”In this decade, we`re going to see a lot more people stressing individuality,” Falk predicted. ”They are going to be looking for something new and unique. In the last few days, I`ve heard several people comment how wonderful it is to be in a store that is so unique, and that they don`t see the same merchandise in this store that they see in every other store.
”And what we want to represent is the best fashion point of view that we can. Fashion is a dynamic business in the sense that it is always changing.” Retailing consultant George Rosenbaum, president of Chicago`s Leo J. Shapiro & Associates, believes Bendel`s may serve as a kind of fashion stalking horse. ”Bendel may be another laboratory from which designs can filter down to the rest of The Limited stores,” he said.
”If you are running a business driven largely by original fashion designers at a very high price, that is going to give you some additional intelligence. A company that has thousands of stores more popularly priced and a capacity to convert very quickly into new merchandise would find a Henri Bendel very valuable.”
Of course, it could work in the other direction, too, with Bendel`s providing an upscale store to which Limited customers may turn as they become more affluent. ”Leslie Wexner dreams of selling to rich women,” Rosenbaum sniffed.
`A very savvy retailer`
Although fashion publisher Millstein insists corporate giantism has already cost Bendel`s its cachet, he praises Falk`s merchandising ability.
”She`s considered a highly experienced and very savvy retailer,” he said.
”She`s the best hope that Wexner has. He has been an expert at servicing the masses, and this could well be his Custer`s last stand in serving the classes.”
Wexner himself readily concedes that`s what Falk brings to the party. ”I have the greatest respect for Susan`s proven merchant skills and especially her sense of style,” he said.
Millstein harkens back to a Henri Bendel that may have succumbed years ago to the impersonal pressures of modern retailing. Falk seems to feel she can shape it into a store of the affluent future with the assurance that most customers will not really care if she radically breaks with tradition. In a survey conducted recently for Crain`s Chicago Business, Shapiro & Associates learned that only 11 percent of Chicago women had even heard of Bendel`s. Having virtually no image in this market, the store could become almost anything Wexner and Falk decide it should be.
Falk, who is single and living in a Manhattan co-op, spends half of her time on the road-checking out designers, inspecting Limited, Inc.
manufacturing facilities in Italy and fine-tuning the stores. She arrives in the office by 7:30 a.m. and rarely leaves until evening, trying to keep her lady`s paradise on the cutting edge.
”Certainly the business is very different at this level,” Falk said,
”but if you look at the fundamentals, they`re really all the same. The mission of The Limited corporation is to bring the best of fashion to the customer very fast. Bendel is probably the extreme example of it, because this customer demands the best.”
