Department Story

Department Story

Turns out there is another upside to my new purging routine. Besides all the space magically appearing in my home, turns out I’m so busy sorting through treasures and trash, I have less time to watch the news. Kinda goes along with that saying, “No news is good news.”

It’s occurred to me as I go through every nook and cranny of every corner in every room of my home, it appears in theory, that my home is a replica of a mini department store. I mean that makes sense. Department stores, after all, were created to buy everything you may ever need for any occasion, for every room in your home.

And so it is, I have declared my home…” Carrie’s…For all you may ever need…minus one or two things.” Carrie’s home goods, fine furniture, jewels, women’s clothing, art supplies, electronics, toiletries. The only department missing at this point is men’s and oh, I’ll leave lingerie off the list as well. Those two things seemed tied together.

No matter, I must admit, I’ve always loved department stores.

The A&S department store in downtown Brooklyn holds the strongest childhood memories. It was there where my father always took my sister and I for our back-to-school clothing wardrobe each year. I’d slave over Seventeen magazine, getting all worked up, knowing exactly what styles and pieces I wanted, and how I wanted to look, all neatly written down in a list I’d clutch excitedly sitting in the front seat of my dad’s light blue Ford or whatever model it was as we drove downtown on our yearly shopping excursion.

It is also where my sister, myself and my dad, all got stuck in said department store during one of these excursions, in the crazy black out of 1965. I remember gingerly walking through the pitch-black store, grasping my dad’s hand, walking down the wooden escalators and out to the parking garage following throngs of shoppers. No cell phones back then with built in flashlights to lead the way. Just people lighting matches and store clerks shining flashlights as we collectively grasped our way through a metropolis as dark as midnight.

And lastly, A&S was where I appeared in my first ever fashion show representing my high school. I remember having to wear some disappointingly goofy outfit, while being in a goofy growth spurt of my own, but hey, I could now call myself a model.

As I got older, the more sophisticated shops began to take precedent. Bloomingdales, being the first department store I could recall that had a restaurant dedicated to frozen yogurt, 40 Carrots, which I still visit to this day, and where my friend and I would traverse mass transit all the way from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side, just for the sake of a giant serving of frozen yogurt although I’d somehow manage to leave with a purchased dress on the side from saved babysitting earnings.

Henri Bendel’s, was the first department shop my friend, bandmate, and business partner at the time, and I went to at 19 years old, to try and sell our handmade eclectic designs we were creating and sewing from an apartment in Park Slope in between our gigs in a punk band called “The New Seeds.” Bendel’s said our designs were too fashion forward. While it was a disappointing outcome, with 20/20 hindsight, I believe the buyer was correct. Twenty years later I saw many of our design ideas from that day, hit the pages of Vogue.

In those days Fifth Ave shopping seemed to officially start at 34th street with the elegant B. Altman’s, and then on to Lord & Taylors, Saks Fifth Ave, Bendel’s and of course Bergdorf Goodman’s. Walking up Fifth Ave at holiday time was pure delight. Magical windows decorated so imaginatively transported the throngs of viewers patiently waiting in block long lines for a glimpse. The holiday windows highlighted everything wonderful about New York City and that time of year.

So, as I drift down memory lane of my growing up years in Brooklyn and New York City while trying to stay focused on letting go of a lifetime of collecting, owning, and dragging around family heirlooms, I am doing my best to ignore the chaotic insanity/reality of the world outside my door.

Yes, it seems to me the world is going to hell in a handbasket. No need for a department store directory to find that. Just turn on the news.