When phrase unfold that Madison Avenue specialty retailer Peress was closing, followers got here to pay their respects — and fill up on the beloved retailer’s choice of largely European lingerie, robes, socks, nightgowns, pajamas and slippers at 50 % off.
Weeks earlier than the rumored August 15 cut-off date, a line shaped outdoors the boutique. An indication on the door learn: “Just one buyer at a time and solely 10 minutes.”
“My coronary heart is already damaged,” stated a lady who requested to not be named however was sporting white Hermès Oran sandals and a knitted bathrobe she was making an attempt on whereas searching the shop.
“Everybody was crying as a result of now we have to go,” stated Bibi, the longtime shopkeeper, in her Romanian accent. “Each single buyer is sorry to see us shut.”
“Bibi could be very protecting of the shop,” stated Herbert Perez, who has operated the shop since 1977. “Very nicely revered. And he or she works for me proper now and closes the enterprise. (Bibi was additionally the one dealing with the lingerie gross sales. “I form of averted it,” he stated.)
“Once I informed her, ‘Bibi, I am closing the enterprise,’ she was crying,” Mr. Perez stated. “I used to be crying. However it was time. My closest cousin and I negotiated with the owner. And I say, “Mike, what? I am 88. I will die in enterprise. I have to take pleasure in my life a bit.”
Mr. Perez was not current on the retailer in his remaining days and was as an alternative confined to a wheelchair at a rehabilitation and medical care facility on the Higher East Aspect.
His father’s aspect of the household, who had been Iraqi Jewish immigrants, opened their first retailer on Kingsbridge Street within the Bronx within the late Twenties. His mom, a Jewish immigrant from Poland, got here to purchase silk stockings. “And so they ended up operating away,” Mr. Perez stated. “So she went again to the store – that is how my dad and mom met – and stated to him, ‘Would you repair them for me?’ He says, ‘Sure, I’ll.’ That is the origin of the Perez household.
They had been married in 1928 or 1929 — Mr. Perez cannot keep in mind precisely — and his brother was born in 1930, then he was born in 1936.
In the meantime, the Peress retailer moved from the Bronx to Washington Heights in 1934 after which to East sixty fourth Road and Madison Avenue in 1955.
“They knew there was a special clientele, a bit extra upscale,” Mr. Perez stated. They took over a former dry cleaner and paid about $500 a month in hire. The landlady was Dorothy Schiff, who was the proprietor after which writer of The New York Put up.
There they constructed a following of strange folks and superstars. They stored a visitor e-book till the early Nineteen Sixties that included signatures from Joan Crawford and “Mrs. Eugene O’Neill on the Lowell Lodge. Liberace indicators it, together with a drawing of a piano and the work “love!”
Purchasers have included socially formidable girls for a lot of a long time, resembling Mariela Agnelli, Brooke Astor, Lily Auchincloss, Betsy Bloomingdale, Gloria Vanderbilt and Nan Kempner. There have been media personalities like Nora Ephron, Kathryn Graham, Diana Vreeland, Barbara Walters. Celebrities like Andy Warhol, Warren Beatty, Mary Tyler Moore, Invoice Murray, Madonna, Cicely Tyson. There was the Schnabel household: Julian Schnabel, Lola Schnabel, Stella Schnabel. And the Kennedys: Caroline Kennedy, Ethel Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy and Lee Radziwill.
Mr. Perez was not at all times immediately concerned within the household enterprise. He labored in varied engineering positions in California and Washington, DC, together with for the Library of Congress, within the infancy of the pc. Within the Nineteen Seventies, his mom invited him to hitch her earlier than she retired.
“And I did as a result of this enterprise was in my blood and I lastly discovered myself,” he stated. “It took me a number of years, however I thrived in it and grew in it.”
In 2000, after the Peress retailer had been on East sixty fourth Road for about 45 years, the constructing was offered and the present landlord stated their lease wouldn’t be renewed. Chanel moved in and nonetheless occupies the place.
The Peress retailer moved additional up Madison Avenue, occupying a former Hungarian bakery close to East 78th Road. When that constructing was offered, it moved to its present location on Madison and East 81st Road.
His followers are nonetheless processing that the shop will quickly be vacant.
Illustrator Joana Aviles posted on Instagram “Peress per semper” with a photograph of herself in gold slippers and a quilted jacket.
Becky Malinskystylist and trend publication author, retailers Zimmerli silk pants and underwear whereas telling her personal story with the shop, the place she buys 2017 or 2018 tank tops, flannel robes, and cotton nightgowns. “My household had small impartial shoe shops after I was rising up and I cherished life within the retailers,” she stated. “When my mother got here to remain after I had my son, I hooked her up.”
Mr. Perez understood that the story of his retailer was the story of New York retail, that its closing represented the tip of a chapter and a brand new form of gentrification. “The company is shopping for, I believe — no, renting — 81st and Madison for lots extra hire than we’re paying.”
At that second he coated his eyes and started to cry. “They are saying you may’t fall in love with what you are promoting,” he stated. “However I did.”
