The first Neiman Marcus is closing today

Friends,

The closing of the flagship Neiman Marcus in Dallas has produced in me a sadness today more stabbing than the closure of Saks at Canal Place, and even more than that year when the flagship Saks on Fifth Avenue failed to put up its miraculous Christmas display. I remember being genuinely troubled by that omission, as though Fifth Avenue itself had neglected one of the appointed signs of Advent. But Neiman Marcus is different. Neiman Marcus was part of the private geography of most of our lives here, and when such places disappear, the map becomes less reliable.

It was in the Dallas store that I was first introduced to the chicken broth and popovers of the Zodiac Room, a combination that remains, in my mind, almost impossibly good. The broth was not pretentious. The popovers were not complicated. Yet together they possessed that mysterious quality that certain simple things acquire when encountered at the proper age and in the proper place. I have eaten more elaborate meals in more celebrated restaurants, but I doubt I will ever regard a Zodiac Room chicken broth and a popover with quite the same reverence again.

And then there were the Zodiac Room models who moved from table to table displaying the latest clothes and jewelry. I never quite knew what to make of the profession. At times it seemed the most liberating occupation imaginable, to spend one's days walking through the Zodiac Room dressed in magnificent clothes while people admired you. At other times it seemed almost humiliating, a strange form of servitude in which one's beauty became part of the merchandise.

There was one particular model, however, about whom I had reached a more favorable theological conclusion. She was a 5'10" brunette with blue eyes, and I was convinced she had some special eclat toward me. It was the Advent season of my senior year, and was late to meet Mother for lunch because I had been chatting with the sales clerk after getting three beautiful Christopher Radko ornaments, including the rare special edition Holiday Express combo piece. After apologizing I showed Mother these glorious pieces when the model walked by.

With the confidence Uncle taught me, I likewise showed this lovely lady my ornaments. She seemed impressed, so I suggested that she join us at the table for lunch. I believed this was a perfectly reasonable proposition. Mother did not, and she revoked the invitation before the young woman could answer. Thus ended a romance that never technically began, although I have always considered the absence of an answer a rather inadequate basis upon which to close the book.

Dallas was my second favorite Neiman Marcus after Chicago. But it was infinitely better than Houston, and this was not merely a matter of taste. In the old Dallas-Houston rivalry, whenever the subject arose, I regarded Dallas's Neiman Marcus as a kind of argumentum ad finem. Houston could have its skyscrapers, its oilmen, its restaurants and whatever other civic boasts it wished to produce. Dallas had the first Neiman Marcus. The case was closed. On what now will Dallasians hang their hat?

What saddens me now is that the closing feels like another small victory for the idea that everything must be newer, brighter, easier and more immediately impressive. Taste has become increasingly perfunctory. We buy furniture that looks old without being old, while genuinely magnificent furniture sits in estate sales and auctions waiting for someone to recognize what it is. I cannot understand spending thousands on the manufactured simulacra of antiquity at Arhaus or Pottery Barn when actual antique furniture, made by people who expected it to outlive them, can sometimes be purchased for a fraction of the price.

Perhaps this is what I mourn most. Not the building itself, although I loved the building, but the assumption that beauty, quality and permanence were worth preserving simply because they were beautiful, well made and permanent.

We had not planned to be in Dallas to say goodbye, which now seems like an unfortunate failure of foresight. Perhaps one of our friends here could go downtown today and say goodbye for us. I would like to imagine someone walking through those doors one final time, finding the Zodiac Room, sitting down, and promptly being served the chicken broth and popovers, and remembering that there was once a time when a department store could be part of the spiritual furniture of a person's life.

Some places are stores until they become memories. Then, without our permission, they become history.

Yours,
TulaneLSU