A stocky middle-aged man in a polyester shirt with a phone attached to his belt faced a group of casually stylish, immaculately groomed women seated behind a table. He held out a choker made of chunky, dull-colored metal. “When you see my jewelry, I want you to be overwhelmed by it,” he said to the women, who looked decidedly underwhelmed. Undeterred, he held up a pair of clasp earrings. “You can wear them all day, they don’t pinch,” he said proudly.
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Despite the fashionable setting and the presence of celebrity stylist Phillip Bloch, who was participating as a judge, the atmosphere was distinctly undivalike. A handsome guy in a Gatsby-esque motoring cap, Bloch is famous for dressing the likes of Britney Spears and Halle Berry but seemed right in his element in the middle of the sales floor, rifling through garment racks and munching on a sandwich from a box lunch. He pooh-poohed the notion that he might have to lower his standards for this heartland crowd. “Absolutely not. We hold everybody up to the same caliber. You’re coming into Marshall Field’s, a major, major store. And you can’t sell something here just ’cause it’s Chicago–I mean, I don’t think of things that way at all.”
“We’re looking for things we don’t normally have in the store,” explained contemporary sportswear buyer Catherine Champion. “We’re looking for people that have great ideas that could be exploded or expanded upon.”
A guy in his early 20s wearing a Montreal Expos visor and baggy jeans ambled up to one of the judges’ tables. “I really don’t know what I’m doing,” he said laconically. “I’ll just show you what I made.” He tossed down a flat, square little purse sewn out of denim with frayed edges. “I made that in 45 minutes,” he said proudly.
Around 2 PM the line of designers had petered out and Bloch and the buyers adjourned to pick the winners. An hour and a half later, a PA system and a backdrop with the Field’s logo had been set up and waiters were passing around champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries. Bloch stepped up to the mike and said a few words about the local significance of Marshall Field’s. “Most of you probably shopped here as kids–or were dragged here,” he said. “And now, my favorite sentence in the world: ‘And the winner is…!’”
