Clothing Company Definitions — United States clothing company definitions from Apparel Search
Peck & Peck was a New York-based retailer of private label women's wear prominent on Fifth Avenue, founded by Edgar Wallace Peck and his brother George H. Peck. It began in New York in 1888 as a hosiery store, with an early location near Madison Square, grew to 78 stores across the United States, and was known for its classic clothes.
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Peck & Peck was purchased in the 1970s by the Minneapolis-based retailing company Salkin & Linoff and, through a combination of poor/in-bred family management and widely decentralized locations, the chain was basically shut down and sold off in pieces.Some specific store locations of the chain were sold by Salkin & Linoff in the mid/late 1980s to H.C. Prange Co. of Sheboygan, Wisconsin (a few single stores may remain).
Peck & Peck was known for its classic clothes. Like Bonwit Teller and B. Altman and Company's post-World War II fashions, Peck & Peck personified and flourished in the pre-hippie era in New York when WASP fashion ruled stores and fashion magazines.The store had the distinction of being listed in Lisa Birnbach's The Official Preppy Handbook as one of the late, great "prep" retailers, along with New York stores like Best & Co. and Abercrombie & Fitch, both since revived.
To writers like Joan Didion, Peck & Peck was descriptor and shorthand for a certain fashion look. Some say that Hillary Clinton has a Peck & Peck look. A store classic was the simple A-shaped dress.
Other fashion retailers that grew in the wake of the closure of Peck & Peck were Ann Taylor and Talbots.
The above definition about the clothing company Peck & Peck is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. The information source is from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and was originally obtained from the following page address https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/peck_&_peck. The definition has been modified by the Apparel Search Company in June 2009. The rest of this page and other pages on Apparel Search are NOT under the free document license.
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Clothing Company Definitions by Name
Peck & Peck began in 1888 as a hosiery store near Madison Square, founded by brothers Edgar Wallace Peck and George H. Peck. Hosiery was a sensible starting point for a women's retailer of that era: a repeat-purchase necessity, small in size, high in foot traffic, and a natural base from which to add clothing. The definition preserves a vivid detail from Time magazine at Edgar Peck's death, that the brothers once had to pay rent every 24 hours to a distrusting landlord, but by then had 19 stores. That contrast, daily rent at the start and a national chain later, is the classic specialty-store growth story, built location by location on a reputation for classic clothes rather than on fashion novelty.
Private label was the business model. As a retailer of private label women's wear, Peck & Peck sold clothing under its own name, controlling design, quality and price without depending on designer brands. For customers, the store name itself was the guarantee, and classic styling suited that model because a private label customer returns for reliability: suits, dresses, coats and separates that stay wearable across seasons. Prominence on Fifth Avenue placed the company among the best known American specialty stores, in the district where women's retail reputations were made.
The chain grew to 78 stores across the United States before it was purchased in the 1970s by the Minneapolis-based retailing company Salkin & Linoff. The definition attributes what followed to a combination of poor and in-bred family management and widely decentralized locations, and records that the chain was basically shut down and sold off in pieces. Some specific store locations were sold by Salkin & Linoff in the mid to late 1980s to H.C. Prange Co. of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and a few single stores may remain, in the wording of the record.
Peck & Peck is a useful case for understanding American specialty retail history. A chain can be nationally known, occupy prestigious addresses and own a loyal classic-clothing customer, and still unravel when ownership changes, management weakens and a scattered store base becomes hard to run as one business. The comparison the definition draws, to the kind of classic store represented by Bonwit Teller, places Peck & Peck in a generation of women's specialty retailers whose names long outlived their store networks. For researchers, the key facts are its 1888 hosiery beginning, the Peck brothers, the 78-store peak, the Salkin & Linoff purchase in the 1970s, and the piecemeal sale of locations in the 1980s.
Peck & Peck was founded by Edgar Wallace Peck and his brother George H. Peck. It began in New York in 1888 as a hosiery store, with an early location near Madison Square.
Peck & Peck grew to 78 stores across the United States and was prominent on Fifth Avenue as a retailer of private label women's wear known for classic clothes.
Peck & Peck was purchased in the 1970s by the Minneapolis-based retailing company Salkin & Linoff. The chain was basically shut down and sold off in pieces, with some store locations sold in the mid to late 1980s to H.C. Prange Co. of Sheboygan, Wisconsin.