Charivari (store)

During the 1970s and 1980s the store grew from one to five locations (four were on the Upper West Side, there was a store on West 57[3][4] and a sixth location on the Upper East Side was added in 1992[1]). The Upper West Side locations were designed by Alan J. Buchsbaum.[5] The store championed Japanese and European designers and is with significantly contributing to the revolution in fashion that took place in the 1980s.[2] Some of the designers featured at Charivari included Azzedine Alaïa, Giorgio Armani, Ann Demeulemeester, Dolce & Gabbana, Perry Ellis, Jean Paul Gaultier, Katharine Hamnett, Marc Jacobs (who, as a teenager, worked at Charivari[1]), Helmut Lang, Issey Miyake, Thierry Mugler, Dries van Noten, Miuccia Prada, Gianni Versace, and Yohji Yamamoto.[2] Writing about the closing of the chain in The New Yorker, Rebecca Mead noted: "If, during the nineteen-eighties, you wanted your clothes to indicate that you were a) in the know, fashionwise; b) a bit of an intellectual; and c) not afraid of wearing unfinished seams or jackets turned inside out, or other things that might, if not worn with sufficient élan, look like fashion disasters, then you shopped at Charivari."[6]

Jon Weiser who, with his mother Selma and sister Barbara Weiser founded and ran the stores, attributed the company's decline and eventual failure to poor financial planning, the recession in the 1990s and its own success: the availability of the avant-garde designers championed by Charivari in both the designers' own stores and at larger department stores made a store like Charivari unnecessary.[7]

In 1967, Upon the debut of Charivari, the Upper West Side received its first glimpse in high fashion. Charivari was a family business company founded by Selma Weiser and her daughter Barbara as well as her son Jon.[8]

In 1976, With the relocation of the men's store across the street, Charivari's rising status as a cutting-edge pilgrimage was secured. Alan Buchsbaum, a minimalist architect became the designer of several Charivari's expansion. Also in 1976, Esquire magazine ran a feature about America's 8 top stores and Charivari was picked for New York.[9]