For anyone who’s ever been to Bergdorf Goodman or anyone who’s ever dreamed of going, this is the documentary that captures the mood, the luxury, the fantasy and all that makes Bergdorf Goodman not just another department store.
Any New Yorker knows that Bergdorf’s defines a certain element of Manhattan, a building that graces the corners of Fifth Ave and 59th Street in the center of midtown’s energy, on the edges of Central Park, and a stone’s throw from the PARIS cinema. Told through the eyes of the city’s fashion icons – Karl Lagerfeld, Oscar de la Renta… the greatest designers, to the newbies like Jason Wu; and then the city’s legends like Joan Rivers or famed producer, Jean Doumanian, there is story behind every shopping department. And every story leaves us feeling effortlessly elegant.
But while the film heightens our shopping senses, and explains the grueling process of buying and window dressing, it slightly lacks in the store’s history that we long to know more of. The Goodman family owned a block of Fifth Avenue before eventually turning it over to Neiman Marcus. But why?
For me, personally there’s decades of memories and personal experience, dating back to a time when I was a teenage girl and couldn’t afford a pair of shoes on the second floor gold pedestals, to the time I could buy the best in Chanel, birthday Louboutin or whatever I desired. And there were the days I was sad and the lower-level makeup girls made me look happy and the days I was the happiest, eventually finding myself being ‘fitted’ like a Princess in a gown – by the Bergdorf’s dressers – in order to be on the arm of a nominee for the BAFTAs. (British Oscars.) ♕ ♚ ♛