Free Carriage Trade by Stephen Birmingham

months ago. After all, the store’s advertising was so-called institutional advertising—just advertising the store’s presence, never any specific merchandise—and it was always the same, just a way of saying rather grandly to the public, “We’re here.” Mostly, her father had explained to her, her job would consist of ordering the ad space, making sure the store got the column inches it ordered, keeping the scrapbooks, and periodically being taken to lunch by space salesmen.
    Still, right from the beginning, Miranda had tried to make the job into something more than that. She had designed a new, and snappier, company letterhead and bill head. “Our bills and letters look as though they were being sent out by a Wall Street law firm,” she said to her father, showing him her new designs.
    â€œThat’s what I like about them,” he said with a smile.
    Next, she had suggested colorful bill stuffers. The store had just opened a tiny new gift boutique with one-of-a-kind treasures, bibelots, and boxes, including a pair of rare Romanov Easter eggs designed by the court jeweler, Peter Carl Fabergé. Miranda proposed announcing the new boutique with a bill stuffer showing a color photograph of the eggs.
    â€œBill stuffers are just that,” her father said. “Just stuff. They’re an annoyance. They go straight into the wastebasket, like the renewal slips that keep falling out of the pages of magazines. My kind of woman wouldn’t like them.”
    Her next campaign had been to have Tarkington’s produce a catalogue.
    â€œCatalogues are not our style,” her father said.
    â€œSaks does lovely catalogues. So does Bloomingdale’s. So do—”
    â€œMy kind of woman would give a catalogue to her cook, who’d use it to wrap yesterday’s fish. A catalogue would cheapen us, Miranda.”
    â€œBut more and more people are shopping from catalogues. There was an article in yesterday’s Times —”
    â€œAnd where is yesterday’s Times ? Being used to wrap yesterday’s fish. There are too many catalogues coming in the mail nowadays. People just toss them out. People come from all over the world to experience our store . Our store provides the Tarkington’s experience. The Tarkington’s experience cannot be conveyed through a catalogue, Miranda.”
    â€œGucci has a catalogue, Tiffany has catalogues. So does Cartier. Of course ours would be the most beautif—”
    â€œDoes Harry Winston have a catalogue?” he asked her.
    â€œNo,” she admitted.
    â€œYou see? I am in the Harry Winston league.”
    Try as she might, she had been unable to rock the boat or to change what had become “the Tarkington’s way of doing things.”
    Under the mantle of Advertising came Publicity, but since the store eschewed most publicity and closely guarded the names of its celebrity clients, that side of her job hadn’t yet amounted to much either. Frustrated, Miranda had often thought that any lackey could do what she did. She didn’t even require a secretary. But she had decided to take her job seriously, nonetheless, to be patient and wait for the day when her father might take one of her ideas seriously and take her seriously—and pay her more than $30,000 a year.
    â€œRetailing’s a man’s business,” her father often said to her. “Women just don’t take to it—except as buyers and salesgirls.”
    Which was a damned lie, and she could have told him so, but she didn’t. What about Dorothy Shaver of Lord & Taylor, Geraldine Stutz of Bendel’s, and Jo Hughes of Bonwit’s and Bergdorf’s? Those were all legendary women—legends in their day—just as legendary as Silas Tarkington, for God’s sake! Those legendary women were all dead now, or retired, and so wasn’t the business ready for some new, young, talented female blood? But she had