Word: bergdorfs
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...glowingly of $6,000 to $10,000 coats that will wear a lifetime, but many furriers disagree. They argue that the fur is so fragile that it would wear out in a year of constant use. And there is no market anyway. A few years ago, Manhattan's Bergdorf Goodman tried for months to sell an $18,000 chinchilla coat, finally remade it into two stoles and sold them at a big loss. But chinchilla men answer that the only pelts available for coats in recent years were poor ones from animals that had died from disease...
Doggy Hats. A Bergdorf customer is an unpredictable creature, especially when she reaches the rarefied air of the fourth floor, the store's famed custom department where evening dresses start at $495 and suits can be bought for as much as $1,000. There, Bergdorf's own stable of crack designers turn out more than 1,500 original models of hats ($52.50 and up) and dresses (up to $1,750) which have little trouble competing with the clothes of Dior, Path, Balenciaga, etc., which the store also sells...
...fastidious soul once ordered a navy suit on the fourth floor, and asked for a swatch of material so that she could have her new Cadillac painted to match it. Another customer spent days at Bergdorf's buying piles of clothes before a trip to Europe. When she got to London, she cabled frantically that she was short of clothes. Would Bergdorf's please send her 24 more outfits, in beige, grey, black and brown? One matron delighted in buying $60 Bergdorf hats for her dachshund; another regularly bought ermine capes for her granddaughter's doll collection...
...Bergdorf vendeuses are well paid for their harrowing jobs (up to $15,000 a year in commissions). One rich buyer, who used to spend more than $100,000 a year in the store, would make the rounds after a shopping tour handing out $8,000 in tips. But recently such big spenders have become more rare, and are not always up to past Bergdorf standards. Once a shabby old woman came in to price a sable coat, was told that it would cost $45,000. She reached into her stocking, produced the cash, and walked out wearing the coat...
...Have Trouble." Bergdorf's special service (and the countless fittings, alterations, etc. that go with it) is so expensive that the store loses money on its custom-made department. Says Chairman Edwin's son Andrew, who last week moved up to the presidency: "Our custom department did better last year; it only lost $68,000 on a $1,000,000 volume." But what Bergdorf's loses on its custom goods is more than made up for by its profitable ready-to-wear department, where dresses are peddled for as little as $30. The store's biggest...