A Love Letter to Neiman Marcus
Why Do We Miss Things More When They’re Gone?
I don’t live in Dallas.
But Dallas, and specifically Neiman Marcus downtown, lives in some of my most cherished memories.
My grandfather, Leonard Tose, owned the Philadelphia Eagles, so when the Eagles played the Cowboys, Dallas was part of our football life. And sometimes being in Dallas came with a very special treat: Neiman Marcus.
I remember sitting in the Zodiac Room with my mom eating the famous popovers with strawberry butter, chicken salad and what, in my childhood memory, was simply the most fabulous orange Jell-O ever.
Turns out it had a much more sophisticated name: Helen Corbitt’s Mandarin Orange Soufflé.
Of course it did.
It was Neiman Marcus.
I didn’t know who Helen Corbitt was then. I only knew I loved the food. Corbitt became Neiman Marcus’s legendary director of food services and helped turn lunch in a department store into an occasion. Her food became part of the experience and, eventually, part of our memories.
I also remember watching my mom try on the most exquisite dresses. I was a young girl in the early ’80s, watching her turn shopping into something special.
My mom understood presentation. She loved beautiful clothes and beautiful things, but she also appreciated the people who knew how to put it all together.
Those people matter.
The sales associates. The personal shoppers. The buyers. The people on the floor and behind the scenes. The people in the trenches who know the merchandise, know their customers, and make retail personal.
Great stores have never been only about what hangs on the racks.
They’re about the person who remembers your name. Who knows your size. Who calls and says, “Something came in, and I thought of you.” Who can look at a dress on a hanger and somehow know it belongs on you.
They don’t simply sell fashion. They help create the moments we remember.
I carried some of those moments forward.
Lunch at Neiman Marcus became a tradition I shared with my own children. Different cities, different years, but the same idea: shop a little, have lunch, talk, laugh and make a day of it.
You don’t necessarily think, We’re creating a family tradition.
You’re having lunch with your mom.
Then one day, you realize you’re having that same lunch with your own kids.
And years later, I found myself back at the Zodiac Room with my friend Jan Spence, who lives in Dallas, celebrating a big victory for my GameDay book series.
There were the popovers again.
As a little girl, I had been there with my mom. Decades later, I was sitting there with a friend celebrating something I had built.
Same place. Different chapter.
Then there was the Neiman Marcus Christmas Book.
When that catalog arrived before the holidays, it was an event in our house. My mom would sit with it and fold down the corners of pages with things she liked.
No algorithm. No scrolling. No “add to cart.”
A folded page.
I can still picture it.
I also still have some of my mom’s beautiful clothes, including a gorgeous brown tweed Rena Lange piece with fur cuffs and a fur collar.
And on the top shelf of my closet sits an old Neiman Marcus hatbox. Inside is a beautiful hat that belonged to my mom, purchased nearly 30 years ago.
A jacket. A hat. A box.
To someone else, they’re things.
To me, they’re chapters.
So, when I stood outside the historic downtown Neiman Marcus and read the history on that door, I began thinking about something much bigger than a department store.
Why do we so often recognize the value of something when we’re about to lose it?
There’s a leadership lesson in this story, too.
Leaders have to make decisions, and sometimes incredibly difficult ones. Sometimes leaders make the decision. Sometimes circumstances make it for them. Either way, leadership means figuring out what comes next while honoring what came before.
The downtown Neiman Marcus story is complicated. The company has said the closure resulted from the termination of its occupancy agreement rather than the store’s financial performance. Neiman Marcus has also continued investing in its future in Dallas, including its NorthPark location.
Change is part of business.
But moving forward doesn’t require forgetting what came before.
A spreadsheet can tell you what a building costs.
It can tell you sales, expenses and margins.
It can’t tell you what happened inside those walls.
It can’t measure a little girl watching her mother try on a beautiful dress.
It can’t measure a salesperson remembering a customer year after year.
It can’t measure a Christmas catalog with folded-down pages, a lunch that becomes a family tradition, or a popover that can take you straight back to your childhood.
And maybe that’s what I want to remember most.
This is my love letter to Neiman Marcus.
To the beautiful store. To the fashion. To the Zodiac Room. To the Christmas Book. To the traditions it created.
And especially, to the people who made walking through those doors feel special.
The sales associates and personal shoppers who spent careers making other people feel beautiful. The buyers who found the extraordinary. The restaurant teams who served generations of families. The people wrapping packages, making appointments, remembering birthdays and quietly creating experiences that became somebody else’s memories.
To everyone who has ever worked at Neiman Marcus or anywhere in retail and wondered whether those little details matter:
They do.
Sometimes we remember them forty years later.
My mom always said: “An ounce of gold cannot buy an inch of time.”
I understand that differently now.
Maybe we don’t have to wait until something is gone to realize how much it meant.
Thank the salesperson.
Have lunch with your mom.
Take your kids.
Wear the beautiful clothes.
Keep the hatbox.
Fold down the page.
Eat the popover.
Treasure it while it’s here.
