Fashion & Beauty

Remembering Loehmann’s: A rite of passage for NYC women

Some people credit a favorite teacher or a special trip abroad with shaping their worldview. When I look back on my own Long Island childhood, I’m pretty sure nothing did a better job preparing me to negotiate difficult situations than the life lessons I learned under the fluorescent lights of a certain discount clothing store.

Everything I needed to know, I learned at Loehmann’s.

Hustling an extra 10 percent markdown because of a defect? That would serve me well later on, when I needed to negotiate with teachers and bosses for higher grades and wages.

Outmaneuvering fellow bargain hunters in my formative years introduced me to the psychological warfare waged by women competing for the attentions of a man.

There were tactics for not betraying your interest in an item for fear it would arouse the intrigue of your fellow shopper. It was the art of playing it cool — and any Loehmann’s alum could teach a master’s class in it.

When I heard that the store, the granddaddy of all discount places, had filed for bankruptcy in December, I knew it was the end of an era, with all locations expected to shutter by March. Where’s a bailout when you need one?

Other deep-discount warehouses came (Century 21) and went (Daffy’s, Filene’s Basement), but none had Loehmann’s heart.

To a girl growing up in the suburbs, the store was a powerful symbol of NYC fashion, with a Back Room housing the fanciest garb — the stuff of legend.

I always got tons of compliments on my Loehmann’s finds: a gorgeous white summer dress I wore religiously for my first college internship, or the appliquéd gown I donned as maid of honor at my sister’s wedding.

I was never quite sure how to respond. Should I wear such things with a badge of honor, happily boasting of its provenance — or say that I just got back from a European shopping spree, where the stores all just happened to have clothes with “slight irregularities”?

There will never be enough space in my closet — or memory — for all of the rare gems I scored at Loehmann’s over the years.

Gorgeous stitched Missoni handbag, $59.99, missing just a little bit of the beading, you were a one-in-a-million purchase: “Just a little clear nail polish, it will be perfect” assured the Russian saleswoman. And it was.

Then there was the impossibly luminous silver dress — with slits up to here — that I couldn’t wait to wear for my boyfriend on our Saturday night date. He broke up with me that evening, but at least I felt glamorous in all my heartbreak.

There was the time seven years ago when I was hit by a car. The first time I emerged from home, feeling shaky and vulnerable and needing a little pickme- up, my sister and I went to the Loehmann’s in Chelsea. There, I bought the most beautiful, regal velvet beaded coat— a steal at $80 (originally retailing at $550). We took a picture the first time I ventured out wearing it, my armor against the big, bad city.

As much as Loehmann’s has always meant to me, the women in my family have an even deeper attachment.

Every year during the Jewish High Holidays, the family would make the pilgrimage for New Year’s outfits. (It’s propitious to wear new clothes during this time, and especially white on Yom Kippur, to resemble the angels.)

The instructions from my relatives for these shopping excursions were always straightforward: “Respectful, but sexy,” they would implore. “Synagogue is crawling with guys and the moms who want to set them up.”

There wasn’t a formal or black-tie event in our lives that Loehmann’s didn’t outfit. I’d accompany my mom on countless Sunday afternoon shopping excursions, foraging for Back Room treasures. And my mom accompanied her mom on expeditions, scoring what my mom would invariably refer to as “sharp, beaded numbers” for glamorous events.

Back then, they went to the original store on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn, a location my mom describes as “very old-school, almost belle époque.”

My friend Malya Levin, a 28-year-old who lives in Park Slope, is another loyalist who felt the acute sting of the news: “Crushing. I feel like I became a woman in that communal dressing room,” she says.

“My first bra, my first everything, came from that place. Everything I own has a Loehmann’s memory. It’s too depressing to go to the liquidation sale.”

So, we will miss you, old friend. Go in peace, but more importantly, go in style. And with an extra 50 percent off already reduced prices.