Don’t worry, though, if you need a $25,000 cupcake car, they’re there for you also.

If I had $200K to spare, maybe this. But John Lithgow?

The wall that has crumbled, according to the New York Post, is the wall between Neiman’s corporate and its Bergdorf Goodman division. Apparently Bergdorf has always had its own fashion office. In what would appear to be a sensible move when you’re trying to hold on to your effin’ ocelot-fur hat, they consolidated some of the roles. Those in the Bergdorf fashion office balked. The men’s fashion director quit.

Neiman President and CEO Karen Katz — who engineered the recent consolidation of Fazio and Patel’s roles — “maybe doesn’t totally get the fashion office,” according to one person close to the company.

The dust-up is another headache for Neiman Chairman Burt Tansky, who is beset by rumors that he will retire — even as the retailer scrambles to cut costs as sales continue to plunge.

One journalism-related complaint, which may seem strange to bother with since we’re talking about the New York Post here: “one person close to the company?”  That’s as specific as you can get?  Sounds like that quote could have come from a homeless guy standing outside the Neiman’s offices downtown.

JCPenney`s Door to Floor technology was cited by InformationWeek as one of the
“20 Great Ideas.” The technology enables store management to know what
merchandise will be delivered up to 48 hours in advance, allowing for optimal
planning and preparation for getting merchandise off the truck and onto the
sales floor.

That’s some outstanding work to ensure that your mom can get you dressed in style.

Neighborhood leaders would tell us that they were most likely to drive over to NorthPark Center, or the Galleria area. So there was a lot of excitement about the new Lake Highlands Town Center when plans were unveiled last year. At that time the first phase was supposed to be done by 2010. Now Prescott is saying it won’t be finished until 2012, because of general economic difficulties.

Why would this dowdy Middle American entity waddle into Midtown in its big old shorts and flip-flops without even bothering to update its ancient Helvetica Light logo, which for anyone who grew up with the company is encrusted with decades of boring, even traumatically parental, associations?

A better question might have been, “Why would a struggling newspaper already regarded as an elitist relic allow a smug, shallow fashionista to display her disdain at the first department store to open in Manhattan in 50 years?” 

Perhaps I’m being sensitive because J. C. Penney is a hometown store. But perhaps not, since executive editor Bill Keller apologized profusely yesterday, but only after public editor Clark Hoyt ran a devastating column on the paper’s own op-ed Sunday blasting Wilson’s piece. Worst of all was Wilson’s mea culpa, as quoted by Hoyt, where she said she thinks of her audience as

1,300 women in Connecticut and urban gay guys in Manhattan

which, she admitted, is “kind of provincial of me.”

2. Speaking of kids, Texas is doing the best job in the nation of reducing the rate of fatal teen car crashes. As the father of a 15-year-old who tells me every day she wants a shiny new pink convertible Volkswagen Beetle, this is good news.

3. If, like me, you’re excited about the new Fairview Macy’s store opening north of Dallas, you’ll be happy to know the company is now being careful to tailor each store’s merchandise to better match the surrounding area’s tastes. Because, as one retailer notes, “the Dallas customer and the Portland customer are very different.” I would suspect, for example, you won’t find T-shirts in Portland with the Fairview city slogan “Keeping It Country.”