Keen On

Little has changed in America more dramatically over the last half century than the retail fashion industry. There was a time, Julie Satow tells us the mid 20th century, when the high fashion department stores on New York City’s Fifth Avenue were not only glamorous, but were actually run by women. This is the story of her new book, When Women Ran Fifth Avenue, a wistful, yet sociologically penetrating view of of the golden age of American department stores. What does the death of the high-end fashion department store tell us about the America of the 2020’s, I asked the New York City based Satow. And should we be nostalgic for department stores which excluded African-Americans and which seem to have compounded the economic and class divisions of American women?Julie Satow is the author of “The Plaza: The Secret Life of America’s Most Famous Hotel” and the forthcoming “When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion,” to be published in June 2024 by Doubleday.Named as one of the "