Remembering Loehmann's

Loehmann’s is closing and I’m so stricken that I think if Loehmann’s were a person, I’d be walking behind the hearse keening.

I know in later years it became barely a shadow of itself. But in its heyday, oh my — be still, my heart. I remember the opening of Loehmann’s on Broadway in 1988.

What a bonanza!

Gorgeous, gorgeous items priced as if they were begging you to buy them.

There was a winning strategy to shopping at Loehmann’s in those days. Back then most of their stock was just one of a kind, so it behooved you to shop in a pack so to speak. Once inside you would spread out into different sections and just grab whatever you saw in each other’s sizes.

I like to think that the White girls were quite the savants, having honed our skills at a tender age at Alexander’s Department Store when my mother and aunt would send us into the sea of women grabbing at bargains on a table. We were no higher than the women’s elbows so we could sneak in right up to the front. We’d duck out with whatever we had snagged and bring them back to my mother and aunt, who would check through the sizes and send us back in again till we found all the right sizes — kind of like Fagin in Oliver Twist.

So Loehmann’s was like that too — you just grabbed whatever you could and sorted it all out in the dressing room when you regrouped. My older sister was brilliant at it. She could spot a jewel from a hundred yards off. I was really good too but for some reason I usually could only find things in my size. Go figure.

Which is why I had such a bundle of evening dresses in my arms the first time I shopped at the Kingsbridge Loehmann’s in 1988. A newbie would have buckled under the weight.

There was no limit on what you could bring into the dressing room in those days, so it was whatever you could carry.

Somebody was trying to talk to me but I was so intent upon my mission that I tried to ignore him. Looking back, I wish I had. However, his persistence and social norms obliged me to acknowledge him.

I could barely see him through all the poufs and flounces — I was spitting out sequins for a week.

It was a young guy and he wanted to know what I thought of the store opening and the prices.