Temple of Cloth
At Dallas' Apparel Mart they'll sell the shirt off their back, but not without some balyhoo and only at a good price. Whoever buys it will sell it again, probably to you.
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These are largely social events; everyone is plied with booze and food and given red carpet treatment. Even so, times were when it took a lot of grit to sit through the morning show—one dismal fashion after another. But fashion promotion at the Apparel Mart has matured to show the best in even the most lackluster items. The models lend their own talents, impressions, and past lives to the commentation, giving the audience a peek inside the people.
For those who still equate the apparel industry with beauty, sex, sin, and iniquity, with luscious women and rich men, it's time to wake up. Sure, there's all of that. One model, given the opportunity to unleash her fury, declared that during markets "The Apparel Mart is Sodom and Gomorrah in one building....You leave yourself and become something altogether different. Everybody gets together in the morning, throws the key on the floor and then everybody scrambles for it. It's the classic situation of the man away from home and the woman who stands to profit by playing along with him."
But these people have a job to do —clothing America (and making money)—everything else is secondary. The glamorous love life is drastically overstated. In actuality it consists of the usual banalities: poor lines, suggestive conversation, winking, pinching, touching, patting inadvertently, proofs of wealth and so on. (Of one thing a girl can be certain: During the first five minutes with a male on the make she will hear how much he earns a year, usually stated as $100,000, how old he is, usually 32, and what color Marquis Brougham he owns.) Perhaps you're familiar with "Say, haven't I seen you on television? No? You look like a model I've seen. Listen, I've got this friend with Eileen Ford in New York. If you'll just give me your name and phone number...."
Every other story you may have heard is definitely true. Make up your own story-there's a 99 per cent chance it's true too. However, since many contenders never get past "forget it, buddy" subtract 50 percent of the scores. It's all very common and unenlightened —has-been females and horny whatevers. The fashion scene is no more exciting or risque (not to mention liberated) than the old secretary-boss thing.
Such behavior, even once removed, is more than some can stomach. One of the largest buyers of junior sportwear in the Southwest feels that no Dallas salesman is smart enough to handle her problems; she prefers to buy in New York. She is sickened by the light attitude taken toward business in the Dallas mart. "In New York no one would offer you a drink in the middle of your work day, like in Dallas. There you drink maybe at 5:30 when the day's about over...." She's there to do a job, and business is business.
One ex-New Yorker, Ed Truman, regional representative for Benson and Partners, candidly describes Texas business transactions in the Apparel Mart style, "Five times a year we have a carnival here...We light up the showroom windows and have a carnival. The Dallas Apparel Mart is a zoo —it is poorly managed. Eighty percent of the salesmen are animals, the other 20 percent try to do business —I mean good Texas houses (manufacturing firms) like Jerrell, Nardis, Howard Wolf, Prophecy,...or California lines like Collage and Arpeja.
"There's no fanfare in New York; if there's a lunch served, it's served to a select few people —behind closed doors if there are drinks served....There are too many major stores that will not come out here [Dallas] because of the behavior. Wining and dining in New York is at a minimum, but like all people, when their [the buyers'] trips are paid for they like to go." He objects to the gimmicks which attract customers to the Apparel Mart showrooms, to the meals and drinks. One showroom has a black chef, in uniform, who spends the day carving roast beef for customers. Truman complains that many salesmen still walk the halls buttonholing people. He jokes (half seriously) that there should be a rule that salesmen can only leave their showrooms to go to the bathroom.
Truman even goes so far as to say that the Texas manufacturers' section of the New York market which cultivates the same atmosphere should stay at home. "It's a joke, and in New York it's so far out of place it isn't funny."
Heinz Simon, advertising and promotion director for the mart, who with Kim Dawson and managing director Clyde Utt forms its ruling triumvirate, feels the carnival atmosphere brings crowds to Dallas markets. "I think that a bit of that [carnival atmosphere] is necessary to set an atmosphere conducive to the market place. This is one of the only facilities which enables a buyer to get the feeling of the whole market. We feel very strongly that's what made the Dallas market what it is...not carnival atmosphere in the derogatory sense or extreme, but in the positive sense."
Simon envisions a future in which no city dominates fashion apparel, but rather five basic centers: New York, Dallas, West Coast, Chicago, and Atlanta. "I don't think any city or facility is going to ever control retail apparel as New York once did. Now, we have a certain geographic advantage...and the fact of the facility here will eventually give us an edge on mid-America....The Apparel Mart already generates 80,000 buyer visits annually....It is the single greatest generator of traffic [people] to Dallas on a year-to-year basis."
Although 36 states and Mexico, Canada and Puerto Rico were represented at the most recent midwinter market (August, 1973), mid-Americans dominated the scene. Registered buyers included more than 3000 from Texas, 1000 from Oklahoma, with the others primarily from Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Kansas. Dallas' most loyal enthusiasts are buyers from small-town stores who are afraid to ride an elevator alone in New York City, whose lifestyle rejects the inconvenience of having to locate New York showrooms spread over miles and throughout hundreds of buildings before they can even begin the knock-down-drag-out process of buying merchandise. Buyers who have been enjoying the relative ease of shopping the Apparel Mart since its opening in 1964 still become distressed at the prospect of navigating the 1,300,000 square-foot, $20-million structure but agree that Dallas wins hands down in convenience among major market centers.
"I feel sure just the layout of the mart adds one day to our market time... says Jean Davis, a buyer for Ben Smith's in Texarkana who can't see any reason "why anyone would have to go to New York or Los Angeles to buy. We can see almost any line we could see in New York here in Dallas, we can drive rather than fly, and we can stay right across the street."
"The people are much nicer in Dallas, in New York they don't show much concern" her associate Tommie Moseley adds during a comfortable lunch break in the Great Hall.
Ruth Gumfory, a buyer for DeeAnns Dress Shop in Grover, Texas, has been buying at the Apparel Mart for 11 years. "I don't go to any other big markets because it's all here in Dallas. The mart has become very organized to me and the only real complaint I have in the whole thing is the cafeteria."
"It's easier to shop here because things are so spread out in New York; here we can see a lot quickly," John Wright Jr., sportswear buyer for Blackburn's in Amarillo, agrees." The salesman here better understands our problems. Deliveries are better. We do go to Los Angeles to deal directly with the manufacturers, to buy off price (at end of season lower prices), and pick up ad money. In Dallas you deal with salesmen, in L.A. or New York with the man who owns the company."
Indeed, dealing directly with the manufacturers seems to be both the theme song of those who holler "make mine New York" and the pet peeve of Dallas salesmen.
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