My Grandmother was Josephine Carbone ( second from the left). She worked for Denholms starting in 1947 as a stock girl. After working her way up through the ladder, she eventually became a woman's buyer, and then from there went on to be a Divisional Merchandise Manager of the all of the Women s departments. Besides being a very career minded woman, she was also a major part of my life, and I miss her dearly. I am so lucky to have been able to call her my grandmother as she was, and still is larger than life to me.
Denholms closed long before I was born but my grandmother brought me shopping at the Galleria as a child and began my love affair with retail.
ReplyDeleteYour windows stopped me in my tracks on Saturday. They are absolutely stunning.
I love reading about the history of department stores, especially window displays. I miss my Filene's in downtown Boston. The displays were out of this world. I really think it's a shame that there are so few free-standing department stores in city's downtown areas now. It's what made each city's downtown unique. If every city has the same department store, what fun is that?
Thank you for posting all of this. I will bookmark and return. It reminds me so much of my grandmother. :)
Rachel, I want to thank you so much for posting such a nice letter on my blog. I too was very young when the store closed, and did shop at the galleria. In fact,my first job was doing the displays at Jordan Marsh. And today I still do window displays in Boston.
ReplyDeleteIt is very sad what has happened to department stores as a whole. With Macy's nationwide, you lose the sense of regional stores that catered to their specific marketplace. If you are interested, their is a great book which I just finished called "Service and Style" by Jan Whitaker. It covers the rise and fall of the department store industry and has a lot of information and pictures on the old Filene's store.
Thanks again :-)
oh! now I'm curious which store displays of yours I may have seen! hehe :) I always stop to look, always. You have my dream job!
ReplyDelete& thank you for the book suggestion, I'll have to check that out.
I just saw that Filene's Basement has a "100 years of the Basement" commemorative coffee mug with the old style logo for sale - I thought that was pretty cute.
I do the Windows and interiors for Ralph Lauren. The holiday windows will be open this week. Check them out at the Newbury st. store!
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