Stanley Marcus

The pregnancy indirectly led to the eventual founding of Neiman-Marcus, as Herbert Sr. decided to leave Sanger's, where he was a buyer of boys' clothing, when he deemed his raise insufficient to support a family.

Given that the family's other option for the money was to invest in the then-unknown Coca-Cola Company, Marcus loved to say that Neiman-Marcus was established "as a result of the bad judgment of its founders.

[11] He attended Forest Avenue High School, where he studied debate as well as English with teacher Myra Brown, whom he later credited with much of his early interest in books.

While living in Boston and pursuing his chosen major, English literature,[14] Marcus began a lifelong hobby of collecting rare and antique books.

He married the former Mary "Billie" Cantrell in 1932; she initially worked in the Neiman-Marcus Sports Shop department until she retired in 1936 after the birth of their first child, Jerrie, followed two years later by twins Richard and Wendy.

Ineligible for military service due to his age, he instead helped the war effort by championing the conservation of scarce resources normally devoted to fashion trends.

He encouraged men to wear drooping socks (to save much-needed rubber that would normally be used for elastic[13]>) and devised regulations for the manufacture of women's and children's clothing that would enable the nation to divert more textile resources to uniforms and other war-related needs: We settled on certain prohibitions, such as lengths, sleeve fullness, patch pockets, ensembles, sweeps of skirts, widths of belts and depth of hems.

It effectively prevented any change of skirt length downward and it blocked any extreme new sleeve or collar development, which might have encouraged women to discard existing clothes.In addition to these restrictions, Marcus recommended to the WPB that coats, suits, jackets and dresses be sold separately "to make them go further.

[25] He solicited nationally famous women to proclaim their support of the new standards; TIME's report on the WPB quoted author Adela Rogers St. Johns predicting, "The overdressed woman will be as unpatriotically conspicuous as though she wore a Japanese kimono.

[25] TIME reported on meetings of "70 fantastic hats," representing the presence of national magazine editors from Ladies' Home Journal and Harper's Bazaar, as well as from newspapers in the urban centers of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, all complying with the WPB's instructions for their coverage of women's and children's fashions.

In his memoirs Marcus recalled, "Many women opened charge accounts just to become members of the club, and in a short time we had a membership of over 100,000, extending all over the country.

[28][29] Marcus began yet another Neiman-Marcus tradition, the "International Fortnight," in 1957 as a way to attract customers in the lull between the fall fashion rush and the Christmas shopping crunch.

The initial Fortnight included concurrent events of art, symphonic music, and film at other locations around Dallas, with an Air France jet bringing "writers, painters, government officials, models, and industry leaders.

[5][34][35][36] When one customer decided his Christmas purchases were not sufficiently impressive, Marcus helped to arrange a full duplication of the store's display window, complete with mannequins and lighting, inside the man's home.

[28] Marcus also routinely insisted customers would be wiser to buy the top quality of a reasonably priced line rather than scaled-down or second-rate versions of an expensive product.

[22] Moving into the 1960s, Marcus became ever more convinced that his city and his company needed to take action to promote racial equality, both as a moral issue and to reduce the growing civil unrest.

Stanley Marcus became a leading figure in the temple in the 1950s[40] and a member of the American Council for Judaism despite being largely a secular Jew who once joked that he was afraid to visit Israel "because he might be converted.

[22][42] While serving as museum chair, Marcus was once called upon by Fred Florence, then chairman of a major local bank and a fellow Temple Emanu-El leader, to explain his inclusion of "a lot of Communist art" he'd been told would be included in an upcoming DMFA "Sports in Art" exhibit, co-sponsored by Sports Illustrated and United States Information Agency as a fund-raiser for the 1956 Olympic team.

Artists represented in the show included four supposed Communist supporters, Leon Kroll, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Ben Shahn, and William Zorach.

Second, he requested that the donors personally write letters of invitation to their Dallas colleagues, feeling that the otherwise suspect art would benefit from the imprimatur of respected figures known for their fine taste.

Despite not knowing the boys involved, Marcus stepped forward to champion their case before the public, taking out a newspaper ad defending the choice as a simple fashion decision rather than rebellion against authority.

"[45] Marcus used his public-relations skills once again when Dallas was labeled "City of Hate" following the November 22, 1963, assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy.

[46][47] In fact, he had cautioned that Kennedy's visit be reconsidered in light of the city's earlier poor reception of Adlai Stevenson and Vice-President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

"[49] The editorial ad—a Neiman-Marcus tradition introduced by his father in the store's early days—both defended the city against outside critiques and offered more intimate criticisms from one who knew the town and its people well.

The message said that Dallas needed to address four areas for community improvement: one, its slum problem; two, its political extremism (called "absolutism" in the text); three, too much attention to physical growth at the expense of "quality" in civic endeavors such as "schools, colleges, symphonies, operas, and museums"; and four, a need to focus less on "civic image" and more on "doing good things and not doing bad things", which he described as "the best public relations.

Neiman's subsequently became a subsidiary of Carter-Hawley Hale, Inc., and Marcus accepted a position as corporate executive vice president and director of CHH.

[32][59] Called on to consult for Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos, the 94-year-old businessman recalled arriving in his customary expensive tailored suit to discover 300 casually dressed employees: "I took off my coat, my necktie and my shirt, down to my T-shirt.

[22] In 2002, the Sotheby's auction house mounted a sale of works from his estate, calling Marcus "an insightful and forward-looking collector and a generous lender whose contributions to exhibitions helped bring notice to the world of Latin American Art during the 40s, 50s and 60s.