Geraldine Stutz, who transformed Henri Bendel from a carriage trade retailer in decline into a chic emporium of designer brands in the 1960s, died last week in New York. She was 80.
Her death came after a long illness, according to her stepdaughter.
Despite a career of more than 50 years in fashion journalism and retailing, Stutz is best known for her 29-year stint as the president of Henri Bendel, especially the U-shaped “street of shops” she implemented during a 1958 overhaul of Bendel’s main floor at its then-home on West 57th Street.
The format has been widely acknowledged as a precursor to modern concept shop merchandising displays. Based on her taste alone, Stutz divided merchandise into small vitrines of watches, handbags, stockings and, along one side, an inspiring “gilded cage,” a giant replica of a birdcage that housed the cosmetics department.
Stutz, credited with a legendary eye for discovering the newest designers and installing their collections in elaborately merchandised departments, introduced such fashion stars as Stephen Burrows, Perry Ellis, Jean Muir, Sonia Rykiel, Carlos Falchi, Mary McFadden, Holly Harp and Ralph Lauren.
“Geraldine had a vision of the kind of store she wanted to create,” said Jean Rosenberg, who was vp, merchandising director, at Bendel’s from six months before Ms. Stutz’s arrival in 1957 to their joint departure in 1986, after the store was sold to The Limited (Columbus, Ohio). “It was for a particular kind of New York woman, where she could find a uniformity of taste and a certain amount of comfort in a smallish environment, where everything in one store was to her liking.”
Stutz was born in Chicago in 1924 and studied drama at Mundelein (Ill.) College before changing her focus to journalism. She moved to New York and in 1947 was hired as an associate fashion editor for Glamour magazine, where she covered shoes.
Stutz later went to work for several footwear manufacturers, including I. Miller, after it had been sold to the conglomerate Genesco. Maxey Jarman, Genesco’s president, asked Stutz to run the Henri Bendel store in 1957. “Jarman had talked to her at great length about her vision for the store,” Rosenberg said. “It was not going to be a store for everybody.”
Bendel’s had been known at various times as a hat shop and as the source of the Duke of Windsor’s wardrobe, but Stutz’s concept was to narrowly focus on a young, sophisticated urban woman, and she rarely ordered clothes larger than size 10. In an article in New York magazine in 1987, Stutz described her taste for what she called “dog whistle” fashion: “clothes with a pitch so high and special that only the thinnest and most sophisticated women would hear their call.” She was also one of the first retailers to consider merchandising food and furniture alongside fashion, and she made way for the in-store designer boutique in the late 1960s.
“She recognized that fashion was more than just about clothing; it was about lifestyle and how one lives,” said Joan Kaner, the fashion director of Neiman Marcus (Dallas), who worked under Stutz from 1967 to 1976. “She thought to put in perfumed candles and potpourri at the entrances so that when people walked in, they got this wonderful aroma. She was born with impeccable taste, and practically brought over every European designer who ever came to America.”
The street of shops replaced what was formerly a dimly lit floor with merchandise randomly displayed along a 100-foot corridor. She installed marble floors and boutiques, small shops within the larger store that changed each season, stocked with exclusive merchandise culled from markets around the world — a flower shop, stationery, a tiny art gallery, tabletop items from Frank MacIntosh, Lee Bailey’s home displays, and a boutique called “Port of Call” with objects from Vietnam and Thailand.
“It was a store that was edited like a magazine,” said Grace Mirabella, former editor of Vogue and of Mirabella magazine. “It was everybody’s meeting place on Saturdays or at Christmastime.”
Robert Rufino, vp, creative services, at Tiffany & Co., designed windows for Henri Bendel in the 1970s, and recalled Stutz’s ability to intermingle her interests in art and film with fashion. “In those days, there was nothing else like Henri Bendel,” he said. “It was like working for the best house in the world. To take this little town house and make it look like someone lived there, as you were going from room to room — it was just one woman’s vision on the world of fashion, and yet it did incredibly well.”
Stutz took the in-store-shop concept further in the late 1960s with boutiques dedicated to the collections of designers she felt could succeed with the store’s support. Stephen Burrows opened his boutique there in 1969, an experience he recalled as a defining moment of his career (one he replicated in 2002 at Bendel’s current Fifth Avenue site).
In 1980, Stutz assembled a team of investors and acquired the store from Genesco. Five years later, as The Limited was about to purchase Henri Bendel, she sold her interest, and worked as a publisher with Random House, overseeing books on Andy Warhol and Elsie de Wolfe. She also continued to consult with designers and retailers through a practice called GSG Group, which she founded in 1993.