How has jewelry retailing changed?
PK: Two things have happened that are very different: There’s almost 24-hour retailing, and there’s a proliferation of stores. You have three or four TV stations selling jewelry all day long. With malls, there’s no way you can inventory a branch as well as a downtown store. There are also so few salespeople in the retail business. They don’t sell, they ask the customer to buy. You have to go call someone to see a piece. It makes it very difficult to step them up. That was the big thing, to step up a customer, and not let them walk [without buying]. Today, you can go into a department store and you’re lucky to find a cashier, let alone a salesperson! When I first got into retail in 1938, there was a whole echelon of people who set the stage of what you were supposed to look like. Paris was still the undisputed capital of fashion, and fashion flowed from the top down, not the street up. It was the accepted theory that a look took seven years to get from top to bottom. Good suits were de
