The Man Behind Neiman Marcus
Born in Dallas in 1905, Stanley Marcus was essentially a character from a 19th-century French novel somehow stranded on the Texas prairie. The epitome of southern soigné, he was a Jew in a gentile beau monde that would never fully accept him. Like Huysmans’s Jean des Esseintes, he merely escaped his isolation in the fantastical splendor of an aesthetic universe entirely of his own design, a world of unmitigated fantasy populated with suitably fabulous names. His Neiman Marcus Award for Distinguished Service in the Field of Fashion, established in 1938, lured the likes of Coco Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Dior to Dallas, where their host would entertain them with bovine-inspired fashion shows, for example, and barbecued meat — something Chanel disliked so much that she scraped it under the table one evening at the Marcus ranch. “Unfortunately,” Marcus recalled, “the contents hit the satin slippers of Elizabeth Arden.”
From “The Man Who Brought Paris to Texas” by James McAuley for New York Times; Photo from Degolyer Library, SMU, Stanley Marcus Papers
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