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Department Stores Quotes

What retail looked like, decade by decade.

These department stores quotes mix nostalgia with harder history, from a teenage holiday job wrapping gifts to one owner admitting the business was personally difficult to run. Personal shoppers being underused is a recurring complaint, echoed under Big.

I don't like department stores. I had a chain of department stores back in 1994 which was Lewis's and Owen Owen, only for a short time, and I found department stores personally difficult.

Quotes by Philip Green

When I started, department stores were either very fashion, or very tailored, so the two never mixed. I mixed it, and they said you're too tailored for fashion and too fashion for tailoring. So I had to move the market....

Quotes by Ozwald Boateng

Personal shoppers in big department stores are seriously under-used.

Quotes by Kate Reardon

Back when I was 15 or 16, in Dallas there was a department store called Sanger-Harris. One holiday season, I got a job as a gift wrapper there. The others were all experts who did that job every year, and...

Quotes by Karen Katz

Always Quotes

I had no idea what I was gonna do after I got my degree in philosophy in 1940. But what I did know was at that time, if you were a Chinese-American, even department stores wouldn't hire you. They'd come...

Quotes by Grace Lee Boggs

More and more department stores are acting as the shop window for a range of retailers now, using space more efficiently to recreate the feel of the local market, creating new market opportunities for the small and the niche.

Quotes by Chuka Umunna

For more than a century, New York City has been home to a constellation of department stores whose openings, closings, and transformations have charted the fortunes and foibles of the city itself.

Quotes by Christina Binkley

The thing about New York is it's like London: you want to go to the boutique places. You can go to the big department stores - Barney's, Bloomingdales and all that stuff - but I like the little stores.

Quotes by Bryan Greenberg

As a kid, I would always shop for my back-to-school clothes at department stores. I lived in a small town, and department stores were all we had access to.

Quotes by Britt Robertson

Frequently Asked Questions

What kinds of memories do these department stores quotes cover?
They range from a teenage holiday job as a gift wrapper to the difficulties of actually owning and running a chain of department stores.
Is there a quote about difficult experiences owning department stores?
Yes, one speaker describes finding department stores personally difficult after briefly owning a chain including Lewis's and Owen Owen in the 1990s.
What does the quote about Chinese-American graduates mean?
It recalls a time around 1940 when even department stores wouldn't hire Chinese-American degree holders, a sobering reminder of past employment discrimination in retail.
Are personal shoppers mentioned in this collection?
Yes, one quote argues that large retailers seriously underuse their personal shopping staff, a recurring observation that also appears in the related Big collection.
What's the story behind the Sanger-Harris quote?
It describes a Dallas department store where the speaker worked a holiday season as a gift wrapper alongside seasoned experts, a specific and personal retail memory.

One quote is more sobering, recalling a time when Chinese-American graduates couldn't even get hired at department stores. For more retail-era recollections, see Always and Back.