Overview

Jerrie Marcus Smith remembers her great aunt Carrie as a humorless woman who always wore black and who, Jerrie says, “scared me to death.” Only as an adult did Jerrie grasp the impact of Carrie Marcus Neiman. Along with her brother, Herbert Marcus Sr., and her husband A.L. Neiman, Carrie co-founded in 1907 the famed Neiman Marcus department store in Dallas, Texas. Carrie played an integral role in the store’s success, despite having three strikes against her: she was a woman, she was Jewish, and (after her husband’s illicit relationship with a second-floor saleswoman) she was divorced. Yet with impeccable taste and exemplary manners, she traveled as a buyer to New York in the 1920s (without a man!) and, as Jerrie says, “was nobody’s pushover.” Carrie was self-taught and never attended college. Her only pregnancy ended in miscarriage; she worked at Neiman Marcus until her death at age 66. Yet through memories shared by her father, the late Neiman Marcus legend Stanley Marcus, as well as through spellbinding interviews with long retired salespeople, Jerrie has felt inextricably tied to Carrie. Each recollection of Aunt Carrie, each remembrance, each detail melted away Jerrie’s childhood fear of the stern woman in black, leaving in its place a colorful portrait of a person to be admired, to be loved and—perhaps most of all—to be shared.

Full Product Details

9780578969602

Table of Contents

Reviews

[Carrie] became a guiding force as Neiman Marcus expanded into new markets. It would be easy to underestimate her role in Neiman Marcus's success; in those days women didn't get a lot of credit for their contributions to retail empires. Her great-niece Jerrie Marcus Smith has spent years collecting stories about Marcus's many achievements . . . [This is] an intimate biography that chronicles how a driven young person became one of fashion's most talented pioneers. --Town and Country Magazine.com

Author Information

JERRIE MARCUS SMITH earned an art history degree from Smith College and is the co-author (with her youngest child, photographer Allison V. Smith), of Reflection of a Man: The Photographs of Stanley Marcus.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available