In memory of Neiman Marcus

The first pair of shoes I ever loved were black suede Louboutin stilettos dotted with clusters of rainbow crystals. They were on display in the downtown Dallas Neiman Marcus, among the hundreds of pairs of dream-worthy pumps, the first time I visited the store as a pre-teen.  

I don’t remember how much they cost, only that my dad looked sick when I told him the price at dinner that night whilst trying to describe how truly ethereal these heels were. He wondered how a person could bring themselves to spend two months’ rent on a pair of shoes. Today, as a money-making adult saddled with responsibilities like car insurance, I understand his point. 

But deep down, I also understand that dreams can be irrational, and sometimes a dream comes in the form of a beautiful, expensive pair of heels. In the years since laying eyes on those shoes, I have never loved any other pair more. 

Last week, Saks Global announced that the flagship Neiman Marcus store, which has anchored downtown Dallas for more than 100 years, will close for good on Sept. 30. I have to imagine the news left thousands of women thinking about their own pair of shoes — or crystal vase, or designer wedding dress, or diamond earrings — that they’ve carried through life, content to say to themselves “maybe someday,” while the dream lives safe and tucked away within the walls of that expensive store. 

This announcement was not totally unexpected, although that did not make it any less painful. 

For the past year, the downtown Neiman Marcus has suffered a slow and undignified death. Plans to shutter the store were first announced in early 2025, before public outrage (and a bit of begging by city officials) delayed the closure. But from that moment on, the gutting began. 

I last visited the store in December, because my boss’s pre-teen daughter was visiting the office for winter break, and because it is the duty of every Dallas woman to initiate the next generation into the club. The trip, though, was disappointing. 

The chocolate chip cookies, which I consider an instrumental part of the Neiman Marcus experience, were unavailable. The children’s section, which I’d promised was stocked with an impressive array of Jelly Cat stuffed animals, had been relegated to a downstairs corner with nary a stuffie in sight. Even the line to meet Santa Claus was only a dozen families deep. This was a museum more than a commerce hub; hushed tones and slow steps and beautiful things everywhere.

The store had vowed to stay open through the holiday season, and while I have to imagine that, three decades ago, a successful Christmas season would have been enough to float the store’s existence through the following year, this felt like a death rattle. Our footsteps echoed, and as I pointed out “this used to be here,” “this isn’t how I remembered it,” I realized we were at a wake. 

The state of downtown did not help the store’s prospects. 

Dallas’ urban core is abandoned on evenings and weekends. While the city has spent the last year working to address homelessness and violent crime throughout the neighborhood, the number of companies pulling out of downtown suggests it may have been too little too late. In addition to Neiman Marcus, tenants of Comerica Tower and AT&T have announced plans to abandon their downtown campuses in recent months. 

Sandwiching the Neiman Marcus announcement last week was the news that the Dallas Mavericks and Dallas Stars will also be pulling out of Dallas’ core once their leases end in 2031. 

At the end of the day, Saks Global is running a business, and sales at the downtown store haven’t been good. My love for the store certainly wasn’t paying any bills. The North Park mall location does 10 times the business, The Dallas Morning News reports, and declines through 2025 landed the Main Street store squarely in the “not profitable” zone. 

The flagship held strong for 112 years, but as Geoffroy van Raemdonck, CEO of Saks Global, put it: “At the end of the day, we are a retail company.” In the case of Neiman Marcus, money won. As a matter of fact, I have yet to ever see money lose. 

“We are disappointed that Saks Global plans to close the historic Neiman Marcus store in downtown Dallas, a cornerstone of our central business district for more than a century,” Kimberly Bizor Tolbert, Dallas city manager, told The Dallas Morning News in a statement. “While this decision is not the outcome we worked toward, the city will continue to partner with Saks Global and our community to pursue new opportunities at this landmark site together.” 

What could ever replace Neiman Marcus? 

So often, it is said that Dallas doesn’t have culture, but I think we sometimes mean we’re embarrassed by what our culture is. It is embarrassing to be seen by the world as a city obsessed with material goods and expensive luxuries. It is embarrassing that we measure ourselves by how big our football stadiums are, how Instagrammable our brunches can be, how many millionaires call our city home. 

But at Neiman Marcus, it was not shameful to fall in love with a beautiful and expensive thing; rather, it was encouraged to share a chunky chocolate chip cookie while tabbing through avant-garde ball gowns or delicate, hand-painted Christmas ornaments. You could try on 100 perfumes or a diamond bracelet just for fun, because impracticality and admiration weren’t seen as burdensome. Whether you were a millionaire woman from Highland Park or a 13-year-old girl from Arlington really made no difference. 

Neiman Marcus is what the Dallas women before us did, and the Dallas women before them. It is literally the story of my ancestors. 

My dad once told me that my grandmother visited the downtown Neiman Marcus to purchase a few items, as all elegant Dallas women at that time did, a few months after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The cashier’s face blanched when my grandmother handed over her credit card that read “Mary Ruby,” assuming that she was in some way related to the infamous nightclub owner who’d mortally wounded JFK’s killer. The act of vengeance took place just a few blocks away from the store. (To be clear, I am not related to Jack Ruby.)

I don’t know if that story is totally true, but I like to think that it is. I told it to myself each time I visited Neiman Marcus.