What's your thing?

Endpoint: Saks Jandel

03:35

Videos (3)

created on: 11/08/2021
by: Lo55o (12478)

Main manual
Endpoint manual

Brand properties

General info :

Saks Jandel was the brand name of a legendary Washington boutique that closed doors in 2016 after 128 years in business, selling fur coats and wedding dresses to wealthy and fashion-conscious elites of Washington.
Saks Jandel was founded in 1888 by the Saks family — distant cousins of the Saks Fifth Avenue founders — as a fur shop.
Peter Marx, president of the Chevy Chase boutique and the fourth generation to run the family-owned business said the reasons for the closure were personal. Marx said he is closing the store to focus on his real estate investment business.

Over the years, Saks Jandel provided a wardrobe for first ladies, philanthropists, lawyers and other guests at the city’s formal galas. Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush shopped there; so did Elizabeth Taylor, Alma Powell and Deeda Blair.
Saks Jandel has also hosted fashion shows benefiting local charities like Sasha Bruce Youthwork, Best Friends Foundation and the Boys & Girls Club of America.

In its heyday, Saks Jandel developed an international reputation as the premiere purveyor of high-end designer fashion in the nation’s capital. And for years, it had little competition. It carried the stalwarts of the runway — Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Emanuel Ungaro, Christian Lacroix and Christian Dior. But it also stocked more avant-garde designers, such as Yohji Yamamoto. And as the fashion industry expanded, it opened its doors to rising talents, such as the Belgian designer Veronique Branquinho and the subversive Miguel Adrover.
The business even advertised in Vogue Paris during the 1980s.

Ernest Marx — Peter’s father — was the one who pushed the business into the designer realm when he took over in 1959. In the 1960s, he’d wanted to stock the work of some of the new American designers who were beginning to gain traction in New York. But his local competitor, Garfinckel’s, had many of the exclusives. So Ernest Marx went to Europe and negotiated deals with the design houses there, some of which endured for decades. He brought Yves Saint Laurent’s ready-to-wear to Washington when it was still an offshoot of the designer’s haute couture, not yet offered to other retailers.