Charming ... Satow could have focused on the stores alone, with their array of delightful bygone details. But by following Odlum, Shaver and Stutz, she posits that women, in shaping retail, invented the American fashion industry ... What Satow doesn’t explore, though her writing is haunted by the topic like a well-dressed ghost, is the decline in American fashion.
A treat for anyone like me who yearns to time travel back to some of those palaces of consumption at the height of their grandeur ... Satow specializes in entertaining cultural histories.
Satow concludes with perhaps excessive optimism about the democratizing nature of online retail and the expanded career options open to women today ... A fascinating journalistic study of three pioneering women in the changing retail landscape of the 20th-century United States.
This stylish account, rich with personal drama and trade secrets, captures the department store in all its glitz, decadence and fun, and showcases the women who made that beautifully curated world go round.
