Word: custin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...very biggest names will disappear: Bonwit Teller. For most of its 80-year history, Bonwit's specialized in dressing well-heeled women in genteel elegance. But the store moved from mere affluence to a position of real fashion influence in the 1960s, when its sharp-tongued president, Mildred Custin, decided that Bonwit's should take the lead in promoting the designs of such emerging ready-to-wear pacesetters as Calvin Klein and France's Andre Courreges and Pierre Cardin. Says a Bonwit's buyer, recalling the glory days: "We were trying to be a store that...
...After Custin left in 1970 to form her own consulting firm, the store floundered. Over the next eight years Bonwit's owner, Genesco, the Nashville shoe manufacturer, brought in five different managers who came and went. After earning a $5 million profit in 1970, the Bonwit chain ran up a series of losses-$4 million last year on revenues of more than $110 million. The revolving-door management made store executives fearful of innovation, and Bonwit's identity as a fashion authority gradually faded. Says a security analyst: "The times changed, and Bonwit's didn...