Century 21 was a place not only of discount but discovery. “Not every New Yorker was a Century shopper, but for the fraternal order of the young, broke, or merely bargain obsessed, it was a temple,” writes MatthewSchneier
The Century 21 storefront in the early 1960s. Photo: Courtesy Century 21/Century 21 Live in New York City long enough and eventually you will come to know a Century 21 bride, just as you will a rent-control lifer and the original Original Ray’s. I know two, women whom no aisle could cow into paying full price.
Not every New Yorker was a Century shopper — “I was never a discount queen,” one legendary New York designer said — but for those who were, a fraternal order of the young, broke, or merely bargain obsessed, the store was a temple, a grand Deco dowager in shabby dishabillé. It dressed down dress-up clothes: At discounts like these, you had to mine for your treasures in dusty piles and jammed racks. But Century rewarded those exertions.
But they kept going — through success, marriage, and maturity. Simmons remembered finding a Gaultier evening gown that she wore to her sister’s wedding, and a red velvet Romeo Gigli jacket that Gigli himself crossed Indochine one night to compliment her on. For years, she went so often — her studio was nearby — that on September 11, when she went to pick up her children, Lena and Cyrus Dunham, from school, they were terrified she had been shopping there when the towers fell.
The store’s culture could be off-putting to those used to the white-glove service of a Bergdorf Goodman or a Barneys. You had to hunt — and sometimes fight — for what you wanted; such niceties as dressing-room doors were a latter-day addition. Those who knew would game the system, buying an expensive outfit, wearing it for a day or a night, and returning it the next day. “You could do that at Century 21,” said the writer Cat Marnell, who did. The atmosphere could be grating.
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