Neiman Marcus is a luxury specialty retail department store, operated by the Neiman Marcus Group in the United States. The company is headquartered in the One Marcus Square building in Downtown Dallas, Texas, and competes with other exclusive department stores such as Barneys New York, Bloomingdale's, Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue. The Neiman Marcus Group also operates the exclusive Bergdorf Goodman specialty retail department stores on Fifth Avenue in New York City and a direct marketing division, Neiman Marcus Direct, which operates catalogue and online operations under the Horchow, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman names.
Herbert Marcus, Sr., a former buyer with Dallas' Sanger Brothers department store, had left his previous job to found a new business with his sister Carrie Marcus Neiman and her husband, A. L. Neiman, then employees of Sanger Brothers competitor A. Harris and Co.. In 1907 the trio found themselves with $25,000 from the successful sales-promotion firm they had built in Atlanta, Georgia, and two potential investments into which to invest the funds. Opting to reject the unknown "sugary soda pop business," the three entrepreneurs chose instead to return to Dallas to found a retail business rather than take a chance on the fledgling Coca-Cola company. For this reason, early company CEO Stanley Marcus was quoted in 1957 as saying in jest that Neiman Marcus was "founded on bad business judgment." Thus the store was established on September 10, 1907.
In 1914, a fire destroyed the Neiman Marcus store and its merchandise. A temporary store was set up and opened in just 17 days. By 1914, Neiman Marcus reopened in its new, permanent location, on Main Street, Dallas at Ervay Street. With the opening of this flagship store, Neiman Marcus increased its product selection to include accessories, lingerie, and children's clothing, as well as expanding the women's apparel department. In 1929, it began offering menswear. (The Main Street building, which many now call the 'original' Neiman Marcus, was given state historic landmark status by the Texas Historical Commission in 1982.)
In 1927, Neiman Marcus premiered the first weekly retail fashion show in the United States. The store staged a special show, "One Hundred Years of Texas Fashions," in 1936 in honor of the centennial of Texas' independence from Mexico. A 1957 profile of the store, "Neiman Marcus of Texas," described the "grandiose and elaborate" gala, noting, "It was on this occasion that one of the most critical among the store's guests, Mrs. Edna Woodman Chase, editor of Vogue, expressing the sentiment of the store's starry-eyed clientele, told the local press: 'I dreamed all my life of the perfect store for women. Then I saw Neiman-Marcus, and my dream came true.'"
“ I dreamed all my life of the perfect store for women. Then I saw Neiman Marcus, and my dream came true. ”
—Edna Woodman Chase, editor of Vogue (1936), quoted in Commentary 1957
The 1950s also saw the addition of a $1.6 million store on Preston Road, a 63,000 square foot plant with decor "inspired by the art and culture of Southwestern Indians" and "colors ... copied from Indian weaving, pottery, and sand paintings"; the themed decor included Kachina figures on colored-glass murals and an Alexander Calder mobile named "Mariposa," the Spanish word for butterfly. Art likewise was used as inspiration for Stanley Marcus' seasonal campaigns to solicit new colors in fabrics, as he did the year that he borrowed 20 Paul Gauguin paintings — many of which had never been publicly exhibited — from collectors around the world and had the vivid colors translated into dyes for wool, silk, and leather. Area teachers cited the Gauguin exhibits as spurring a dramatic increase in art study.
In the 1950s and '60s Gittings operated a portrait studio in Neiman Marcus. Clients included Lyndon Johnson, Howard Hughes, and the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his family.
In 1957, the first Neiman Marcus outside the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex opened in Houston as a freestanding store and became an anchor in the Houston Galleria in 1970. In 1971, the first Neiman Marcus outside Texas opened in Bal Harbour, Florida. In subsequent years, stores have opened in over 30 cities across the United States, including Chicago, Atlanta, Beverly Hills, San Francisco, St. Louis, Boston, and Las Vegas.
