Michael Corkery

His death was confirmed by his daughter, Robin Neimark Seegal.

As the leader of Bergdorf Goodman for more than 17 years, starting in 1975, Neimark (pronounced NEE-mark) helped transform it into an arbiter of high fashion that catered to the richest New Yorkers and wealthy visitors from around the world

Under Neimark’s watch, Bergdorf helped start the careers of young designers like Michael Kors, whose clothing was given coveted space on the sales floor.

In New York’s crowded retail landscape, Bergdorf — which was founded in 1899 as a tailor shop and has been in the same Fifth Avenue location since 1928 — has continued to stand out even as its parent company, Neiman Marcus, struggles with a large debt load resulting from a private equity buyout.

Rather than expanding the Bergdorf brand widely around the country, as department stores like Macy’s and Lord &amp; Taylor have done, Neimark largely concentrated on the store’s New York presence, catering to women shopping for $200,000 furs and bankers seeking suede shoes and sumptuous suits.

Even with the rise of online shopping, many luxury retailers have come to realize, as Neimark did, the importance of investing in a marquee store.

“Ira had a strong point of view about how Bergdorf has to be unique and different than the companies he competed with,” Terry Lundgren, a former chief executive of Macy’s, said in an interview. “He set the tone for the Bergdorf that you see today.”

Although Neimark projected a keen sense for how the wealthy lived and dressed, he faced financial challenges growing up in Brooklyn.

Ira Neimark was born Dec. 12, 1921, to Eugene Neimark, a lawyer, and Lillian (Braude) Neimark. His father died when Ira was 11, leaving his mother to raise him and his two brothers. To support her sons, she worked as a department store saleswoman.

At age 16, Ira left high school and got a job at Bonwit Teller, the luxury department store on Fifth Avenue. (It was eventually torn down to make way for Trump Tower.)

He later attended night classes at Columbia University, but he said it was the many different jobs he held in retailing that taught him the most about business.

His first job at Bonwit Teller was as a pageboy, greeting businessmen who visited a club inside the store. He soon had another job, opening the store door for customers, who often pulled up in limousines and were accompanied by footmen.

In his book “Crossing Fifth Avenue to Bergdorf Goodman: An Insider’s Account on the Rise of Luxury Retailing” (2006), Neimark recalled that once, while working as a door boy, he witnessed Salvador Dalí pushing a bathtub through a display window that Dalí had designed. The artist, he said, was unhappy that a fur coat had been removed from a mannequin in the display and sold to a customer.

“I heard a deafening crash as a fur-lined bathtub pushed through a plate-glass window,’’ Neimark wrote.

Neimark went on to work in the handbag department of Bonwit Teller; later, as an office assistant, his job was to highlight the most important articles in Women’s Wear Daily and show them to the company’s top executive.

He left the store to join the Army Air Forces. He was trained as a pilot and served in the Pacific during World War II.

But even in the military, he remained focused on retailing. During flight training he would visit large stores around the country and send his observations back to the executives at Bonwit Teller.

After the war, Neimark went to work for the Gladdings department store in Providence, Rhode Island, where he met Jacqueline Myers, who worked as a buyer for her family’s leather goods stores. They were married in 1953.

Neimark had been working as executive vice president and general merchandise manager of B. Altman, another retailer, when he was recruited to be Bergdorf’s president in January 1975. It was at Bergdorf Goodman that he made his biggest mark.

He set about expanding the store’s fashion credentials, which he believed were lagging behind those of Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale’s. To the city’s socialites, Bergdorf’s offerings seemed safe, dull and expensive. Neimark wanted to bring more excitement to the store.

In his opinion, he wrote, the ideal Bergdorf customers should be “the women who went to the best restaurants; the women who stayed in the best hotels; the women who belonged to the best clubs; the women who went to the best resorts.”

To help him reach those customers, he hired Dawn Mello to revamp Bergdorf’s fashion offerings.

In the early 1980s, Mello stumbled upon Kors setting up a clothing display in a window of a specialty store on Fifth Avenue. She asked him who the designer was; Kors said that he was.

“I arranged to see him in my office days later,” Mello recalled in an email. “He arrived with an armful of clothes. Ira and I gave him a little space in the store, and the rest is history.”

Neimark was also a director of Hermès in Paris and an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. He retired from Bergdorf in 1992.

In addition to his wife and daughter, he is survived by five grandchildren and a great-grandson. An older daughter, Eugenie Neimark Lewis, known as Janie, died in 2016.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/26/obituaries/ira-neimark-dead.html" id="7a2b5479-da0b-372d-a706-e111901d7670">The New York Times</a>.

Ira Neimark, Bergdorf Executive Who Put Fashion First, Dies at 97

Ira Neimark, who started in retail as a department store pageboy and went on to build Bergdorf Goodman into the standard-bearer for luxury shopping, died April 18 at his home in Harrison, New York. He was 97.

His death was confirmed by the company, which did not disclose a cause. Nordstrom revealed last month that he had recently learned that he had lymphoma, but that his doctors had told him that it was curable and that he would continue to work during chemotherapy.

His brothers, Peter, 56, and Erik, 55, who served as co-presidents with him, will continue to run Nordstrom, the company said in a statement.

With his brothers, Nordstrom had been steering the company through a difficult period in retail, as the rise of e-commerce has challenged the company’s traditional focus on building a successful national network of premium and discount clothing and shoe stores.

Nordstrom upgraded many of its stores with the latest technology and high-end services, but those investments have dampened profits and the company’s share price. Despite the pressures, the Nordstrom family has said that it is investing in stores and its online business for the long term.

Blake Willard Nordstrom was born Oct. 4, 1960, to Bruce and Frances (Wakeman) Nordstrom. He attended the University of Washington, where he rowed crew, from 1978 to 1982 before leaving to work full-time. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology in 2015, the university said.

Nordstrom started his career in the 1970s as a schoolboy, working in the stockroom in the company’s downtown Seattle store. In high school and in college, he worked in the women’s shoe department.

Over the years Nordstrom assumed increasing responsibility in the company, holding various positions in stores and regional management and as a buyer. He became president of Nordstrom in 2000, and his brothers joined him as co-presidents in 2015. He was also a former director of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

Founded as a shoe store in Seattle in 1901 by John W. Nordstrom, a Swedish immigrant, and a business partner, Carl F. Wallin, the company expanded nationally over the decades, although relatively slowly compared with other retailers. Still based in Seattle, it has 122 full-line stores and 244 Nordstrom Rack stores, a discount chain. In the third quarter, its profits totaled $67 million on revenues of $3.7 billion.

Last year, Blake Nordstrom, together with other family members, set out to acquire all of the company’s shares and take it private.

The Nordstroms wanted relief from Wall Street’s relentless focus on short-term profits, but an independent committee on the company’s board said that the family’s offer to buy it was too low. The company remains publicly traded, although the family has left open the possibility of making another buyout attempt. The family owns about a third of the retailer’s shares, the largest block.

Nordstrom married Molly A. Lewis in 1988, and she survives him. In addition to his brothers, he is also survived by his father and two children.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/03/obituaries/blake-w-nordstrom-dead.html" id="6e5ede77-a047-387c-a541-fdfce25a3bfc">The New York Times</a>.

Blake W. Nordstrom, a co-president of Nordstrom, the chain of upscale clothing and shoe stores that grew out of a single establishment founded by his great-grandfather, died Wednesday in Seattle. He was 58.

Blake W. Nordstrom, Scion of Retail Family, Dies at 58

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Michael Corkery

Articles written by the author

Ira Neimark, Bergdorf Executive Who Put Fashion First, Dies at 97

Blake W. Nordstrom, Scion of Retail Family, Dies at 58