Fifth Avenue's Finest

When Henry Kaiser bought a mink coat for his wife during the war, he was astonished to hear that it would take three weeks to make. "But I can build an oceangoing ship in a week," he protested. Answered the storekeeper coldly: "Mr. Kaiser, you are a great man. I am only a furrier."

The furrier was Edwin Goodman, owner of Manhattan's Bergdorf Goodman, a store which Edwin Goodman calls, with some reason, the "most elegant specialty shop in the world." Last week New York's W'hitneys, Sloans, Rockefellers and 850 other guests turned out to dine & dance at Manhattan's Hotel Plaza at a $50-a-plate party (the proceeds went to cancer research) to celebrate the golden anni-ersary of the store.

On Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf's handsome, nine-story building is no less a landmark than the famed Vanderbilt mansion which it replaced 23 years ago. On Bergdorf's books are 48,000 active charge accounts of the royal and rich of the world, some of them adding up to $100,000 a year. Recently, when Haile Selassie wanted some finery for his court, he simply charged it up at Bergdorf's. Bergdorf

Goodman grosses $11 million a year, has lost money in only two years in its history.

37 1/2 Wrappers. Edwin Goodman,now 75, is the son and grandson of shopkeepers who would have been flabbergasted by his store's opulence. On his office wall hangs one of his father's ads: "Ladies wrappers at 37 1/2" Edwin Goodman started out as a tailor working for Manhattan dressmaker Herman Bergdorf in a little gaslit shop on lower Fifth Avenue, soon bought into the business with $15,000 borrowed from relatives. One day, Goodman helped make a special suit for Bergdorf's sister, who was private secretary to Mrs. William Goadby Loew, a prominent society matron. Mrs. Loew admired the suit, spread the word among her friends, and Bergdorf Goodman was made.

As Goodman's tailoring reputation grew (Bergdorf retired in 1903), he added new lines of furs, dresses and accessories. But his real success was based on a personal touch. A man came in to buy a coat for his wife, tried in vain to describe her proportions--until he spotted the store's 6 ft. 175 Ib. owner. "That's her size," said he. Goodman donned a mink, paraded around the store, and made the sale.

Out of such personalized service grew a selling system rarely found in U.S. retailing. At Bergdorf's, a big customer does not wander haphazardly from one salesgirl to the next: she is accompanied everywhere in the store by a "vendeuse" who knows and has memorized her tastes. Bergdorf's vendeuses are sometimes as well known as their customers (on Bergdorf's payroll now: Mrs. Geoffrey Gates, the ex-Mrs. Harry Hopkins, Author Kay --Eisenhower Was My Boss--Summers-by) and sometimes too hoity-toity even for Bergdorf's. When the Grand Duchess

Marie of Russia sold at Bergdorf's, she didn't go to the customer: she sat and waited for customers to be brought to her by other salesgirls.

Doggy Hats. A Bergdorf customer is an unpredictable creature, especially when she reaches the rarefied air of the fourth floor, the store's famed custom department where evening dresses start at $495 and suits can be bought for as much as $1,000. There, Bergdorf's own stable of crack designers turn out more than 1,500 original models of hats ($52.50 and up) and dresses (up to $1,750) which have little trouble competing with the clothes of Dior, Path, Balenciaga, etc., which the store also sells.

A fastidious soul once ordered a navy suit on the fourth floor, and asked for a swatch of material so that she could have her new Cadillac painted to match it. Another customer spent days at Bergdorf's buying piles of clothes before a trip to Europe. When she got to London, she cabled frantically that she was short of clothes. Would Bergdorf's please send her 24 more outfits, in beige, grey, black and brown? One matron delighted in buying $60 Bergdorf hats for her dachshund; another regularly bought ermine capes for her granddaughter's doll collection. For years, one of Bergdorf's steadiest customers was an aged woman who bought a custom-made burial dress once a year to be sure that she'd be properly attired when the time came (she was).

Bergdorf vendeuses are well paid for their harrowing jobs (up to $15,000 a year in commissions). One rich buyer, who used to spend more than $100,000 a year in the store, would make the rounds after a shopping tour handing out $8,000 in tips. But recently such big spenders have become more rare, and are not always up to past Bergdorf standards. Once a shabby old woman came in to price a sable coat, was told that it would cost $45,000. She reached into her stocking, produced the cash, and walked out wearing the coat.

"We Have Trouble." Bergdorf's special service (and the countless fittings, alterations, etc. that go with it) is so expensive that the store loses money on its custom-made department. Says Chairman Edwin's son Andrew, who last week moved up to the presidency: "Our custom department did better last year; it only lost $68,000 on a $1,000,000 volume." But what Bergdorf's loses on its custom goods is more than made up for by its profitable ready-to-wear department, where dresses are peddled for as little as $30. The store's biggest drawing card: its flashy Fifth Avenue display windows, which have been known to pull in as many as 80 customers in one day to buy a dress in the window.

Recently, Edwin Goodman has added more lines (e.g., antiques, men's wear, stationery, lingerie) to keep sales up while high taxes kill off the big charge accounts. But Goodman has never opened a branch store, and never plans to. Says he: "We have enough trouble staying at the top as it is."

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