DEPARTMENT STORES AND NEW YORK FASHION

The second event moved the discussion beyond Parsons faculty and students and included a more varied group of scholars and industry professionals. Titled “Department Stores and New York Fashion,” the one-day symposium was held in February 2014 and featured lectures about department stores and their relationship to the New York and American fashion retail industry. This full day event allowed participants to delve more thoroughly into the role of the department store in the retail and cultural landscape.

The event took the format of a traditional, historical academic analysis. It featured presentations by Professor William R. Leach of Columbia University, author of Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (1994); Alessandra Wood, a design historian and PhD candidate at the University of Delaware who is working on her dissertation, “Designing the Department Store: Designers, Retail Establishments, and the Changing Public Perception of Design in the Mid-Twentieth Century”; Jan Whitaker, a department store historian and author of The World of the Department Store (2011); and Michael Lisicky, a department store historian and author of many books on individual department stores, who also collaborates with Whitaker.

The full day of programming generated excellent discussion regarding the legacy of the department store and its many impacts upon the national retail industry, commerce, design, and even cultural memory. Dr. Leach and Jan Whitaker opened the morning session, which was followed by a lunch break; the afternoon session featured Alessandra Wood and Michael Lisicky, followed by a short coffee break and then culminating in a panel discussion with all participants except for Dr. Leach, who departed earlier. Each lecture presented new methodologies and areas of inquiry for further research, but the final panel was most interesting in combining the expertise of three diverse historians, who discussed the future of this cultural institution in depth with the audience. The symposium provided a new opportunity to contemplate the legacy and future of the department store in not only the retail industry, but also in contemporary research practice.