AMBER BAXTER BOX

STYLE
|
FASHION
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SOCIAL
DALLAS SEPTEMBER 2014
A
STUNNINGLY
FALL
FORTY FIVE
TEN’s
CHATTING UP
MARIO
TESTINO
RADICAL
RETAIL
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REWARDSTYLE’S
EVERYWHERE
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CONNECTED COUPLE
AMBER &
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SPECIAL SECTION:
PHOTOGRAPHY MAXINE HELFMAN. EXECUTIVE EDITOR KATE STUKENBERG. MODEL MAKAYLA HARMON, KIM DAWSON AGENCY. HAIR AND MAKEUP AL TIDWELL,
KIM DAWSON AGENCY. STYLIST CARLOS ALONSO PARADA AND STYLING ASSISTANT JILL SCHLICHENMAIER, ON SET MANAGEMENT, DALLAS. ROBERTO CAVALLI LACE
EMBROIDERED DRESS $13,660, AND FUR STOLE, BY SPECIAL ORDER, AT ROBERTO CAVALLI BOUTIQUE. LYNN BAN ATOMIC EARRINGS $2,200, AND PAVÉ COIL RING
$3,500, AT GRANGE HALL. SUE GRAGG SAPPHIRE-AND-DIAMOND RING, PRICE UPON REQUEST, AT SUE GRAGG PRECIOUS JEWELS.
PA P E RC I T Y MAG . CO M
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W
hen an acquaintance passed by Louise
Eiseman as she was having her portrait
taken for this story, she called to her
friend, “I’m having my picture taken for the
centerfold of Playboy!” The 84-year-old
stylish, beautiful and witty matriarch of Eiseman Jewels
has held court for 50 years at the family’s eponymous
store in NorthPark Center — the last remaining original
tenant from when the shopping center opened in 1965.
Her beloved and equally stylish husband Richard (Dick)
Eiseman founded his jewelry emporium in 1964 and
passed away from Parkinson’s disease in 1996. Son
Richard Eiseman took the helm, having earned his
allowance as a teenager stacking watch boxes. After
studying at the Gemological Institute of America in
New York and learning the business at the knee of his
father, Richard became the visionary behind Eiseman
Jewels. But the heart of the company is arguably Louise
Eiseman, whose business card reads “Queen Mum.”
She can still be found in the store from time to time,
greeting guests with the same hospitality and courtesy
that has sustained Eiseman Jewels over the past halfcentury. In celebration of the store’s golden anniversary,
the Eisemans recently completed renovations including
an 800-square-foot space dedicated to an extensive
collection of Rolex timepieces, which opened last
November, thus expanding the footprint to 4,000 square
feet. Louise, a devoted patron of UT Southwestern
medical school and longtime docent at the Dallas
Museum of Art, is as passionate about philanthropy as
she is about jewels. With a sweet smile and a beautiful
strand of pearls draped about her neck, the Dallas
native recalls with pinpoint clarity how her hometown
has changed over the years, the glamour of decades
past and meeting Mr. Eiseman.
GROWING UP IN DALLAS.
I just love Dallas. I’ve never known anywhere else.
I was born in the old St. Paul hospital. When I was a
little girl at Walnut Hill grammar school, Dallas was
a cotton town. If the weather changed, school was
let out, and we picked cotton with our friends. We
either rode our bikes or took the bus to school —
our parents couldn’t afford to use gasoline.
MEETING MR. EISEMAN.
My aunt and Dick’s mother were friends in Atlanta.
Dick came here to work for Reliable Stores [a
corporation that operated furniture and jewelry
stores in Texas and several other states], which sold
everything from rifles to cookware to diamonds. My
aunt called my mother and said, “This nice Dicky
Eiseman is coming to Dallas to work. Would you
introduce him to some young people?” We had him
over for dinner, but I didn’t even bother to sit at the
table because he was 26, and I was a teenager. For
my 16th birthday, I took my three best friends and
their dates to the Century Room in the Adolphus
Hotel for dinner. The hotel had an ice skating rink
[from 1936 to 1965]. We didn’t have credit cards in
those days, so Mother said, “Daddy and I will come
down later, and then we’ll pay the bill.” I said, “You
can’t do that!” I was too embarrassed to have my
parents come, so they invited that nice Dicky Eiseman,
got him a date, and he chaperoned my party. I never
thought much about him afterwards. Then years
later, he returned. He went to work for another firm
in Houston, called his friends in Dallas and said,
“I’m back in Texas and would like to come to Dallas.
Are there some girls there you could fix me up with?”
They said, “Well, Louise has grown up!” We got
married June 22, 1953 in my parents’ backyard.
It’s the hottest June 22 on record to this day — 103
degrees in the shade. The candles on my mother’s
dining room table were just melting.
nice and wonderful to us and treated us like his
own children. Both men said to Dick separate
times, “If you don’t go to work for me, go into
business for yourself.” We figured if Stanley Marcus
and M.B. Zale told him, then this was the thing
to do.
ENTER NORTHPARK.
We decided to go into NorthPark Center because
I had known Raymond and Patsy Nasher for years. I
had every confidence in the world that they would
do the right thing. Titche’s was going to expand here
[from their downtown flagship], and they asked us
to bring our jewelry with them. When Titche’s [which
occupied the current Dillard’s space] changed its
name to Joske’s, we moved to a leased department
in Frost Bros., a very high-end store with women’s
ready-to-wear, jewelry and shoes. That store was
where Tiffany & Co. is now. After Frost Bros. went
bankrupt, we moved across the hall to this space
in 1990. We have been the only family-owned jewelry
store in NorthPark. There was Zales, but there were so
many of them, and Neiman Marcus had their
jewelry department, but we were a much more
mom-and-pop operation. We’ve been here
ever since.
SUBTLE RECOGNITION.
People learned about us through word of mouth.
We were always happy to loan jewelry to a ball
chairman — we have jeweled several ball chairmen
every year. They’ll say, “Oh, this diamond necklace?
It’s from Eiseman’s.” We wanted to be in the
background but still out there.
PRECIOUS CARGO.
Fifty years ago, we had two kids and drove a station
wagon. Dick was delivering a necklace to this lady’s
house. He presented it to her, then her husband said
to the butler, “Would you bring Mr. Eiseman’s car
around?” The husband walked out, looked at the car
and said, “You brought this expensive necklace over
here in that station wagon?” Dick went out the next
BY LINDEN WILSON. PORTRAIT SHAYNA FONTANA. day and bought a Lincoln Continental because if
they thought he should be in a fancy car, maybe he
better be!
STYLE
DNA
LOUISE
EISEMAN
One of my dear friends was Merle Levy. She was
married to Irvin Levy and died of cancer about 25
years ago. The Levys have given millions of dollars
to Dallas charities. Irvin was president of the Dallas
Museum of Art and was one of the three musketeers,
along with Harry Parker and George Charlton, who
brought in Wendy Reves’ art collection. My father
and George Dahl were friends and neighbors —
George did all the architecture and art deco buildings
for the Texas State Fair in 1936. Annette Strauss,
who was mayor of Dallas, was a good friend of
mine. She was chairman of everything as far as
fund-raising was concerned. One of my good
buddies was Betty Chambers. She and I played
tennis together, and her husband, Jim, was the
publisher of the Dallas Times Herald. He was also
a mentor to Dick. We had dinner and went to
parties with them.
IMPORTANCE OF BEING ELEGANT.
I don’t think anybody I knew back in those days
wore blue jeans except when they were on their
own ranch. They didn’t wear jeans to the grocery
store. Everybody was much more elegantly dressed.
My husband was beautifully dressed. While telling
a story at his funeral, Richard said, “When we went
on Indian Guides camp-outs, my daddy was the
only one who wore monogrammed pajamas.”
Dick really liked elegance, and I think that is the
basis for us today.
ROYAL MOMENT.
[When Queen Elizabeth visited Austin in May 1991]
we did the jewelry for Ann Richards, who was
governor of Texas. Not that we could even compare
to Queen Elizabeth’s jewelry, but we wanted to
have something elegant. We have a picture of Dick
with Ann Richards and the jewelry, and the queen is
coming down the street. It was really fun.
IN THE ’60S …
Braniff Airlines was very important. We were excited
because it was very glamorous. I went out to the
Braniff hangar to watch Alexander Calder paint one
of the airplanes. I remember that Mary Wells
Lawrence, the wife of Harding Lawrence [president
of Braniff], was a fabulous advertising person [who
became successful with her Braniff advertising
campaign]. She was the one who created the
Alka-Seltzer “plop plop, fizz fizz.”
FAVORITE JEWELRY.
I love pearls. If you can only have one piece of
jewelry, have a strand of pearls. For my 80th birthday,
which was almost five years ago, the children gave
me two strands. I think pearls are so complementary
to any woman.
EISEMAN EARLY YEARS.
We had leased departments in stores all over Texas
and in Balliets, which is like a little Neiman Marcus
in Oklahoma City (I bought a lot of gorgeous clothes
from there — I just gave a bunch of them away to
the Dallas Historical Society and to the Denton
Collection). We were also at Titche-Goettinger for a
long time. Over the years, Stanley Marcus asked Dick
to run his jewelry department. We were very friendly
with the Marcus family — my sister and Stanley’s
daughter were classmates in high school and college.
Same thing with the Zale family; M.B. Zale was so
SOCIAL CIRCLES.
SUCCESS SECRETS.
Louise, with husband Dick,
wearing a custom Eiseman
South Sea pearl and pink
tourmaline necklace, 1987
I think it’s integrity. We have elegance, sincerity.
The other person’s feelings come first. We have a
great team. It’s not just Richard, [it’s] everybody we
work with — our vendors that are very kind and
supportive, our associates in the store. It’s teamwork.
Whatever we do, it should be the finest, the most
truthful and the most wonderful.
“I LOVE PEARLS. IF YOU CAN ONLY HAVE ONE PIECE OF JEWELRY, HAVE A STRAND OF PEARLS.”
–LOUISE EISEMAN
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