Lord & Taylor is the 'warhorse' of Fifth Avenue

NEW YORK CITY -- This week, a stylish Upper East Side woman shopping at the Fifth Avenue flagship store of Lord & Taylor spotted a floral-print skirt by Karen Kane that she really wanted, but she couldn't find any on the racks in her small size.

Just as she was about to leave, she spotted one on a mannequin. She flagged down a manager, who helpfully stripped off the skirt by yanking off the dummy's arms and shimmying the skirt up over its head.

As the woman strolled off to try on the skirt -- which she later purchased, for $78 minus a 20 percent discount from a coupon she'd received for being an especially loyal shopper -- the floor manager twisted the arms back onto the dummy and shrugged off her extra effort. "That's okay. That's what we're here for."

In its bid to recreate a profitable niche above Macy's and below Bloomingdale's, Lord & Taylor is emphasizing customer service. Out front on Fifth Avenue, a doorman stands on the curb, awaiting the few shoppers pulling up in cars, or offering to flag down cabs, just as uniformed staff do at the city's hotels. A smiling fellow in a nice suit offers a chipper, "Good afternoon," as shoppers walk through the front doors: No dowdy, blue-smocked Wal-Mart greeters here.

The staff, which still stands at attention every morning for the playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner," is trying to juggle the store's history -- it was the first major department store on Fifth Avenue, and has been in the same building since 1914 -- with the need to draw in a younger crowd.

Beyond the entrance, shoppers encounter 10 clean, well-stocked floors.

The store offers something for everyone of a certain budget, from jewelry to Jones New York power suits, Kenneth Cole casual wear, intimates, plus sizes, and $400 Chetta B silk little black dresses.

The store, with 47 locations concentrated on the Eastern Seaboard, Michigan and Illinois, has a very loyal following.

Greta Nisen, 69, said she had been coming to the store for almost four decades, in recent years about once a week. "Everything's easy here," she said, indicating the open-floor layouts and sensible groupings of clothing. Echoing many women interviewed yesterday, Nisen said that shopping at Macy's, with its endless warrens of boutiques stretched between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, "can make you crazy." She added, "You don't have to spend all day here to find what you're looking for, although you can, if you want to." (There are two small interior cafes.)

But if the store is mainly a favorite of women in the their 50s and 60s, it is trying to making a strong push for teens and twentysomethings. In a bid for street cred that brings to mind the pop culture-inspired windows of Bloomingdale's, Lord & Taylor is participating in a program known as "Art in Action," which brings visual art to unexpected locations.

This month, the store unveiled 11 window displays along Fifth Avenue that had been designed by Tats Cru, the Bronx-based graffiti art squad. Indicating the gulf between the company's reputation and pop culture, a local design blog said the initiative "seems to be a way to cast a wider net in hopes of catching more than wrinkled old sea crabs." Another local blog, calling Lord & Taylor a "warhorse," giggled that the move was "a cringe-worthy attempt to keep up with the kids."

Still, the store seems to be popular among European tourists. Londoner Rekha Sarin, who was returning to the store a few hours after a previous visit to pick up some shoes, said the selection and value were excellent even before the U.S. dollar plummeted.

One Hungarian couple in their 30s, who make shopping trips from Budapest to New York every six months, declared the store to be their favorite in the United States because it had everything they were looking for but wasn't overwhelming like Macy's. Informed that Lord & Taylor had pledged to open stores in Canada, the husband growled from behind his sunglasses: "Huh. So we'll go to Canada now."

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)