The Making of Vintage Jacques Post: Favorite Nordstrom Story

A lot of people ask me if Jacques Levine really writes for this blog or it its just some fictional shoe designer. While he was first skeptical of this “blogggging business” the truth is that my Grandfather Jacques writes and contributes to most of the posts (the re-blogging is all me). Anyway, I come up with a topic, generally based on conversations we’ve had at the office, and he writes a post and then faxes it to me so that I can type it and post it to the blog. As you can see, discerning his handwriting is quite a challenge, but aside from a few run-on sentences, his wits are entirely sharp at 88. 

Here is a typed version of his favorite Nordstrom Story:

Not easy to pick a favorite Nordstrom Story. My father sold the original Llyod Nordstrom when there was one store downtown in the depression in the thirties. He decided in the early fifties, after the war (World War 2) it was time for me to go out to the pacific coast and made an appointment for me to meet his old friends, in downtown Seattle.

I arrived and was introduced to young Bruce Nordstrom who was being trained to buy women’s evening shoes and slippers. For several years Bruce and I worked together learning the business.

Fast forward 40 years during which I was not the Northwest traveling man, but had been selling several other divisions, as Nordstrom’s was no longer the one great shoe store, but a chain of department stores. 

I was in Seattle for a day on my way to vacation and decided to say hello to some of the buyers as the family had decided to let the new organization run the business. All the buyers were off for a holiday week - only Bruce, the now sort of retired Chairman, was there, and the receptionist announced my presence. Bruce bounded out of the office to greet his old friend whom he had made his first buy from when he was young. It was a wonderful visit.