Fashion Consumption as Cultural Production

Since its founding in 1907, the Dallas-based department store Neiman Marcus has shaped the landscape of American fashion. Its first generation of leadership built the store’s reputation through carefully curating the wardrobes of Texans whose financial and cultural circumstances grew rapidly. Building on that success, the store’s second generation of leadership grew its profile from regional to national through many initiatives, including the Neiman Marcus Award. Given annually from 1938 through the early 1970s, this “Oscars of Fashion” and its related programming ostensibly empowered fashion designers. Additionally, it also granted the store increased cultural and industry influence, which it used to shape communities around the “Neiman Marcus Woman,” Texas, the American West, and the United States. And, through the award’s rhetoric, Neiman Marcus conflated fashion production and consumption, inexorably linking the cultural and financial power of shoppers with the success of designers.