So long, everyday glamour

Denise Solis, a wardrobe coordinator who spends a good deal of time shopping for clothes professionally, was out of town last week when Federated Department Stores Inc. announced that, as part of its takeover of the May Department Stores Co., the Robinson’s name will soon be joining those of Bullock’s, Broadway and I. Magnin on the list of dearly departed local retail nameplates.

“Robinson’s is closing? Oh, that’s so horrible,” Solis said upon learning the news. Solis, who grew up in Los Angeles, worked for about a year at the Robinson’s in Santa Monica Place in the early 1980s before the chain was acquired by May Co. and began what many fashion lovers consider its slide into purveyor of undistinguished merchandise.

“I loved getting dressed up to go to work, and I loved the customers,” said Solis. “You really felt like you had a clientele that you were helping in building their wardrobe. It was a beautiful fashion store. They had everything.”

And yet, Solis’ recent forays into Robinson’s stores (which became Robinsons-May a few years after the company was purchased in 1986) have not been so rewarding. The stores, she thought, were cluttered. The lighting was bad. “It’s just so disappointing now,” she said.

It wasn’t always like that. When I was growing up in the San Fernando Valley in the ‘60s, in a family of six that stretched its budget to make ends meet, Robinson’s was slightly intimidating. Like Bullock’s, it was a fancy place, somewhere your mom might take you for an extremely special occasion. Normally, we shopped at JCPenney and Montgomery Ward, or, if we were lucky, Broadway. Saks Fifth Avenue and I. Magnin were completely out of reach and Nordstrom hadn’t arrived yet.

How things change: On Tuesday evening, I wandered into the free-standing Robinsons-May in Beverly Hills, which, it must be said, still has acres of easy parking, a real plus nowadays. Just about everything was on sale and, on the upper floors, the vista was exactly as a friend had just described it: “acres of clothes and no fashion in sight.”

“Robinson’s was kind of an upper-end staple,” said Anne Crawford, a veteran of the Los Angeles fashion scene who works as a brand ambassador these days for French shoe firm Roger Vivier and Italian designer Alberta Ferretti. “The last time I went to Robinson’s was, I think, 10 years ago. I needed towels.”

Jaye Hersh, who owns the popular West L.A. boutique Intuition, grew up in Los Angeles and was once very fond of Robinson’s. “The great Robinson’s in Beverly Hills used to be such a treat to go to,” she said. “They had a really strong junior department and they were more on top of the trends, as opposed to a Bullock’s, which was more conservative. Those stores, though, they could not react quickly enough. They just lost their edge.”

There was a brief period when Robinson’s really did have an edge. Before the great swallowing up of department and specialty store chains by other department and specialty stores that began in the 1980s and continues today, the familiar retail emporiums of Southern California had distinct personalities and followings.

Although many department and specialty stores have reported rising profits in the last year, they have faced tumultuous times and have struggled as their market share has been eroded by the rising popularity of off-price chains, warehouse club stores such as Costco and a substantial drop in foot traffic at indoor malls.

For a few years before the Robinson’s chain was bought by May Co., under the guidance of then-Chief Executive Michael Gould, who is now chairman of Bloomingdale’s, Robinson’s fashioned itself into a major player on the local fashion and charity scene. (Through a spokeswoman, Gould declined to be interviewed since Federated owns Bloomingdale’s, and its $11-billion acquisition of May Department Stores is not complete.)

Cynthia Godlewski, who worked as Robinson’s press relations manager for about three years in the mid-1980s and coordinated many designer visits, trunk shows, charity fundraisers and product launches, loved her work. “It was very exciting,” said Godlewski, who now works in publishing. “I was in my 20s, and it may sound silly now, but Robinson’s was sort of a fashion leader. All the top designers came -- Giorgio Armani, Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Karl Lagerfeld -- either to launch their new collections or their fragrances. That’s how fashion was promoted and it was a big deal.”

I was a fashion reporter for a few years in that era, when department and specialty stores in Los Angeles competed for visits by the important American and European designers and for exclusive rights to fragrances. Few designers had their own boutiques yet -- that was a phenomenon that would develop later -- so the stores devoted sometimes extravagant resources to educating shoppers and fashion lovers about trends and new labels.

And of course, the ‘80s were a time when designers and models became celebrities, and celebrities began designing clothes. In 1986, 21-year-old Princess Stephanie of Monaco came to Los Angeles to launch her swimwear line at Bullock’s in the Beverly Center. Around the same time, then-supermodel Christie Brinkley came to Robinson’s in Beverly Hills to launch her first line of swimsuits. Brinkley, who was at the peak of her fame, sat in the store’s executive offices and told me how much she hated her “fat” thighs.

Though many think of that Beverly Hills store as a flagship, Robinson’s was always headquartered in downtown L.A. A thoroughly local institution, the store was founded in 1883 by Joseph Winchester Robinson near the corner of Temple and Spring streets. Originally it was called the Boston Dry Goods Store, a nod to Robinson’s Massachusetts roots.

Sabra Lande, an artist in Laguna Beach, was an executive at Robinson’s from about 1978 to 1988, and during that time became the chain’s first female senior vice president. That time, she said, was “the most memorable 10 years of my life.”

Gould, she said, allowed a “very experimental” atmosphere to flourish. Lande recalled Robinson’s becoming the first retailer to create a special section for petite sizes -- “We called it Club 5-foot-4, and it ended up being a gigantic business,” she said. She also created a department called Red Bag, where young men’s and young women’s clothes were merchandised together.

“The junior business was in such disarray at that time,” she said. “We saw this trend where these people were shopping together and wearing each other’s clothes.” The chain’s executives all supported the concept, as did the manufacturers, she said, and it was “immensely successful.”

For some, grieving the passing of Robinson’s is a little like mourning for something that died a long time ago.

“The demise of Robinson’s is old news,” said Ilse Metchek, executive director of the California Fashion Assn., a nonprofit organization that supports the region’s textile and apparel industries. Robinson’s, she said, started to lose cachet in the mid- to late-1980s after Gould was fired, ostensibly for operating expenses that were deemed too high by his bosses at Associated Dry Goods, which then owned Robinson’s. “When he left,” said Metchek, “you had a succession of mediocre management. They started to compete down with May Co. instead of competing up with Bullock’s Wilshire.... Then when they merged with May Co., it really didn’t matter anymore because Robinson’s had already lost its cachet.”

Metchek said she thinks the only reason May Co. kept the Robinson’s name on its stores at all “is because it gives the impression that it’s higher-end than it really is since May Co. is really competing with Target and Sears.”

Indeed, Lande said that a few years ago she visited the Robinson’s store in South Coast Plaza, which she helped design. “It broke my heart,” she said. “It had just changed so.”