Bloomingdale's Traub Dies at 87

July 12, 2012  by in UnCategorized   

By Home Furnishings Business in Obituaries on July 13, 2012

Marvin S. Traub, the retailing impresario who transformed Bloomingdale's from a stodgy Upper East Side family department store into a trendsetting international showcase of style and showmanship in the 1970s and '80s, died on Wednesday at age 87.

The cause was bladder cancer, said Amy Hafkin, the general manager of Marvin Traub Associates, the consulting firm he founded in 1992 after retiring as chairman and chief executive of Bloomingdale's. Traub was born in Manhattan on April 14, 1925, the only child of Sam and Bea Traub. His father was a corset company executive, and his mother was a senior saleswoman at Bonwit Teller; her customers included Rose Kennedy, Marlene Dietrich and Mary Martin.

One of the most creative retailers of his era, Traub made Bloomingdale's synonymous with luxury, introduced many of the world's best-known clothing designers and created a national chain that acquired a reputation for status-conscious merchandising and chic interior moods that dazzled the eye.

He staged dazzling promotional events at his flagship store, at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan--a block-square emporium that stood hard by the rumble of Third Avenue elevated trains until 1955.

Traub saluted China, Italy, France, Portugal, Ireland and Israel with lavish productions that featured not only traditional furnishings, clothing and gourmet foods but also displays of artifacts from antiquity, glittering dinner parties and guest lists that included ambassadors, business titans, movie stars, presidents' wives and sometimes royalty.

Jacqueline Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson and Betty Ford were patrons. During America's Bicentennial celebrations in 1976, Traub escorted Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip through crowds of shoppers as the royal couple took in Wedgwood china, winter sportswear reminiscent of Britain's hunting gear and reproductions of English antique furniture.

For "India: The Ultimate Fantasy," in 1978, Traub deployed life-size papier-mâché elephants and camels in primary colors, wooden temple carvings, silk banners waving from the ceilings, and kohl-eyed Indian women, who mingled in their saris and bangles with patrons in musk-scented halls overflowing with Indian jewelry, accessories, apparel and home furnishings.

When Traub decided to build a new restaurant in the flagship store in 1979, he created Le Train Bleu, a reproduction of the 70-foot dining car that once made the Lyons-Marseille-Monte Carlo run in style: mahogany paneling with green channel-quilted trim, beveled mirrors, Victorian lamps and brass luggage racks--holding shopping bags--all tucked into the sixth-floor housewares department.

In 1980, "Come to China at Bloomingdale's," a six-week pageant Traub negotiated in Beijing like a treaty, featured an entire Cantonese farmhouse, a Chinese garden pavilion and 20 exquisite robes from 1763 to 1908 that had never been seen outside the Forbidden City. He filled 14 branch stores in the Northeast with enough food, fashions and filigree for 11 million shoppers.

In 1984, his $20 million "Fête de France" was a cornucopia of chocolate by Mazet de Montargis; oils, herbs and pâtés from Provence; the fashion creations of 25 designers; replicas of silver from the liner Normandie; and sculptures from the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris. It began with a dinner for 1,600 people who paid $200 each to talk at one another above a crush of shoulders and satin.

"We are not only in competition with other stores, but with the Guggenheim and the Met," Traub once explained.

Grace Mirabella, Vogue's editor in chief in the 1970s and '80s, anointed him "the Sol Hurok of retailing," a reference to the great impresario who brought the Bolshoi Ballet to America.