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A Daily Conversation About Dallas

On a beautiful Tuesday afternoon, D Magazine took to Highland Park Village, one of Dallas’ ritziest shopping destinations, to ask lunchers and shoppers what was on their Christmas list. Many, it seemed, hadn’t much thought of Christmas yet (bet stores feel stupid for putting their holiday décor up in August now, huh?) but otherwise, good health, peace, and time with family were popular requests, as was ski gear. Here is what all 30 participants told us: 

Holiday

The Ultimate Dallas Holiday Gift Guide

Caitlin Clark
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It should not surprise you that our city is home to some of the state’s most beautiful shops, talented creators, and innovative brands. You’ll find game-changing active wear, sought-after sweets, and non-toxic toys for tots. If you know where to look, you can get everyone on your Christmas list something that has roots right here in Dallas. Lucky for you, we’ve gathered 66 gift-worthy options that embody the best of the city where you live. Give with some local pride this year.

Let me preface this by stating I’m a fan of The Tot. This year, we named The Tot’s Highland Park Village shop the best children’s boutique in Dallas. My child has an adorable jacket that changes color in the rain from The Tot, which I bought for $58 last fall, one size up, so that I could fold up the sleeves the first year and get as much mileage out of it as possible.

The other day I got a press release about The Tot’s new collaboration with the artist Alex Israel and otherwise reasonably priced retailer Levi’s. On the back of the jacket, you’ll find an avocado. The avocado is smiling. A slight upturn at the corner of its mouth, and eyebrows tilted in such a way it seems as if the fruit’s up to something and just starting to feel guilty. Like, maybe it broke its mom’s vase and brushed the shards under the rug. Or maybe cut the cheese in public. Anyhow, the jacket is going for $1,000 and benefits pediatric HIV and childhood programming at the DMA.

Christmas

The 2017 Neiman Marcus Fantasy Gifts Have Arrived

Caitlin Clark
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Today, Neiman Marcus unveiled its 91st edition of the Christmas Book. What first began as a 16-page booklet in 1926 has grown into 300 pages filled with over 780 gifts from the luxurious Dallas institution. It also features a festive mosaic cover comprised of 1,500 images of memories submitted from shoppers via social media.

That’s all great (and very millennial-esque), but that’s not what we’re here to talk about today. No, today is a day to focus on the 2017 Fantasy Gifts. 10 gifts that by their given adjective are deemed beyond reach. Gifts defined by phrases that include “one-of-a-kind,” “products for a year,” and “a very VIP week.”

Let’s talk about them.

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Celebrities

That One Time D Magazine Sent Me to Interview Demi Lovato

Gable Mansfield
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I remember the first time I saw Demi Lovato in concert. She was opening up for the Jonas Brothers’ Burnin’ Up Tour at the then Superpages.com Center (now Starplex Pavillion, thankfully). The Disney Channel had just premiered an original movie called Camp Rock, where Demi had finally landed a starring role after years as a neighborhood kid named Angela on Barney & Friends. She recorded hopeful singles where her killer vocals shined, and was slightly edgier than Disney contemporaries such as Selena Gomez and Miley Cyrus (oh how times have changed). I loved her.

During that summer concert in 2008, Demi stood on stage reflecting on her first memory of the Superpages.com Center: singing in a radio station’s amateur concert in the parking lot of the Kelly Clarkson concert. For her, performing on the same stage as a woman she’d looked up to her whole adolescent life was the moment she’d been waiting for. Demi might actually make it big.

When Caitlin, our online lifestyle editor, offered to let me take her place interviewing Demi at an upcoming event at Fabletics in Legacy West, I unsuccessfully tried to play it cool and keep it together. But I was going to meet Demi, my girl since I was a 16-year-old pop-punk fanatic, and it was going to be my day to thrive.

Fashion

Brian Bolke Steps Down as President of Forty Five Ten

Caitlin Clark
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For many, the name Forty Five Ten is synonymous with Brian Bolke. Although the retail savant announced in an email memo Friday afternoon (as first reported by the Dallas Morning News) that he’d be stepping back as president of the luxury retailer, he (along with his co-founder Shelley Musselman) likely always will be tied to the luxury store.

According to the DMN, Bolke will be taking a consulting role with Headington Companies, to which he sold Forty Five Ten to three years ago, leaving five stores (For Home, TTH, and Forty Five Ten in Dallas, Houston, and Napa Valley) to a talented team that includes vice president of creative and fashion director Taylor Tomasi Hill, men’s fashion director Nick Wooster, and Forty Five Ten’s home creative director Rob Dailey.

Many, many months ago, we published a story about the best bars in Dallas. I asked the noted painter Richard Patterson to contribute a 300-word story about a bar that he and I both love, the joint at the Lakewood Whole Foods. His submission came in a bit over the word count. Like 4,000 words over the assigned limit. Which, appropriately, is pretty much how the bloke paints. He goes beyond.

So I did what any reasonable editor would do. I told Richard that he was a horrible, terrible, sucky writer. I said there was no way D Magazine could accommodate all the words he’d written. Um, but then, because Richard is brilliant, not to put too fine a point on it, I thought we should maybe run his entire essay. Oh, okay, I cut a few words. But if you care about Dallas and culture and Dallas culture and beer and cheese and everything that is important to humanity, then read his essay. It’s in our July issue and just went online.

Kurt Eichenwald is the noted journalist who was recently attacked with a seizure-inducing tweet. With his last kid now in college, he and his wife have decided to downsize. From the looks of this listing, they are selling almost everything in their Preston Hollow house. Furniture, guitars, shoes, a screenplay for The Informant! It’s all there. You want a couple hundred pages of internal corporate documents from Enron? How about the medical records of Harold Shipman, one of the worst serial killers in recorded history? If that’s your sort of thing, Kurt’s house is the place to be tomorrow and Saturday. Oh, and if you wonder about those laptops, Kurts tells me: “It has taken two weeks to get computers wiped because I’m using Defense Department-grade deletion. I’m still working on last one.” Visa, Mastercard, and Discover accepted.

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Business

Neiman Marcus Is Up For Sale Once Again

Peter Simek
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The last time I was in the Zodiac Room (a few weeks ago, for a Dallas Summer Musicals mixer), the space felt like a shadow of its former self — stuffy, stale, over-worn, and dressed up in a color palette of another era. Despite its oft-cited role as the anchor tenant of a glitzing-up stretch of Main Street, compared to the new Forty Five Ten and the Joule complex, the downtown Neiman Marcus’ flagship feels in need of a freshen up.

Today, the company announced that it is looking for just that. Neiman’s, which has been bought and sold many, many times since the Marcus family parted with the iconic brand in the late 1960s is up for sale once again.

City Council Will Probably Delay $800 Million Bond Package. It was set to be voted on in May, but it’ll now likely appear on a November ballot. The mayor had lots of concerns yesterday, like, you know, the Police and Fire Pension System that has the potential to bring the city to insolvency. Looks like our crummy streets will have to wait a while longer.

Attorney Files Motion to Continue Representing Enrique Arochi. Arochi’s trial attorney in the Christina Morris kidnapping case, Steven Miears, filed a motion on appeal to represent Arochi—who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison—after the trial judge appointed a different attorney to handle Arochi’s appeal. Miears is not eligible to handle Collin County indigent cases, but last week he filed the petition for emergency relief with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to try to get back on the case. The petition is pending.

Paralyzed Woman Sues Uber and Honda. A car crash in the Honda Odyssey that Sarah Milburn requested on Uber in November 2015 left her a quadriplegic. In late December, she and her parents filed a lawsuit against Uber, the Uber driver, the owner of the Odyssey, and Honda. The lawsuit says Uber and Honda “failed to provide [Milburn] with the safety she reasonably expected, and as a result, she was catastrophically injured and faces a lifetime of physical impairment and challenges.”

Rangers Will Announce New Stadium Architect Today. A news conference will be held at Globe Life Park at 11 a.m. to make the announcement. The billion-dollar, retractable-roof stadium was approved by Arlington residents in November. Dallas-based HKS Inc., which designed the current ballpark, is a contender for architect of the new one. Construction on the stadium will likely start this summer.

Macy’s Closing Two Area Stores Due to Sales Declining. One is in Southwest Center Mall in Dallas, and the other is in Collin Creek Mall in Plano. Six other stores throughout Texas will close too, leaving 13 Macy’s stores operating in North Texas.

Will Tonight be Dallas’s First Snow This Winter? Maybe! There’s a 20 percent chance of snow late tonight into tomorrow morning, but it probably won’t stick. Still, if you’re up late, you may see a few flurries.

Image via Dfwcre8tive
Image via Dfwcre8tive

An alert FrontBurnervian (more commonly known around the office as Wick Allison) forwarded me an essay about Stanley Marcus entitled “The Man Who Brought Paris to Dallas” that appeared in T Magazine this past Sunday. In it, Dallas-bred writer James McAuley gives a brief yet poetic sweep of Marcus’ life, including the retailer impresario’s odd position as a liberal Jew in a conservative city, and reminisces about the last time he himself had a face-to-face with “our city’s de facto mayor.”

It’s not the first time McAuley has written about Stanley Marcus. In 2013, he wrote an essay about Marcus’ relationship with Coco Chanel, and her relationship with Nazi collaborators. Yet, I find the timing of Sunday’s piece, a sort-of love letter to the department store’s former CEO, particularly interesting. There’s no real peg, that I can see. Rumors surrounding Neiman’s debt and layoffs continue to swirl, though an October report on the store’s credit agreement downgraded a gossipy snowstorm to a freezing rain. Not to mention, this comes just two weeks after Forty Five Ten, the biggest downtown-Dallas retail build in decades, opened its doors.

It could be that McAuley’s essay was a favor for a PR contact or a personal hope to give the retailer a boost, but perhaps, Stanley Marcus and his luxury store left such a nostalgic mark on so many of us, that it’s a story that never needs a reason. Give the piece a look. It also comes with some cool Mad Men-era photos through which to click.

Editor’s note: I should also mention that I put together a spread on Neiman’s Christmas books in our December issue—another entertaining trip down NM memory lane. The truth is, my request to produce the article was also fueled by nostalgia. My grandmother, Nancy, was such a die-hard Neimans customer, that when my aunt called to tell her personal shopper that Nancy had passed, Betsy’s reaction was an emphatic “Dammit!” A few days later, at Nancy’s wake, everyone in my family left a memento in her coffin. My contribution: A Neiman Marcus catalog.

Business

Greatest Dallasites: Stanley Marcus (No. 20)

Jan Strimple, model, fashion event producer
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Stanley Marcus was the intellectual P.T. Barnum of retail who took a dusty, conservative city named Dallas and spit-shined its image for the world. He boldly led a single local store to become a global arbiter of taste. Having a love for international travel, he turned his curiosity about art, food, and culture into the legendary Neiman Marcus Fortnights, building cultural bridges through commerce. Mr. Stanley, as everyone called him, lured queens, princesses, and international celebrities to the store, all while theatrically selling Dallas to the world.

His experience with anti-Semitism in Dallas and at Amherst College informed many of his more notable actions. After the JFK assassination, he took out a full-page newspaper ad, penning a letter to Dallas titled “What’s Right With Dallas.” He asked North Texas residents to show “toleration of differing points of view for the health of the community” and to reject “the spirit of absolutism for which our community has suffered.”

He was inclusive while selling to an exclusive mindset, being the first of the downtown Dallas merchants to allow African-American shoppers to try on clothing before purchasing. He guided and cajoled Dallas into thinking broadly.

To celebrate his 80th birthday, he fulfilled a lifelong dream of performing as a clown in a circus. In a 1985 New York Times interview, he said, “Friends asked me why I’d go out and make a damn fool of myself. I told them I wasn’t going to make a damn fool of myself. I’m curious. I have an insatiable desire to learn. Life’s too much fun to get off the merry-go-round.’’

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