What's in a Name?
On my visit home, I made sure to stop by Marshall Field's. Since I won't be back at all this summer, I wanted to make one last visit before the name changes over to Macy's in September.
Those of you from Chicago (or the Chicagoland area, as the weathermen and the car dealers like to say) already know about this travesty. For those of you who don't, let me just tell you Marshall Field's department store is an institution in Chicago, and Macy's has bought it. Field's has been through several mergers in the past decade or so, but the name has remained the same.
Now Macy's is renaming the store. What's the big deal, you might ask? Simply put, the name is synonymous with Chicago. It's a part of the city's history, as much as any other landmark or institution. 
How nuts are we about Field's? From Wikipedia:
The store's legendary iconography parallels the company's close relationship to Midwestern identity. The green shopping bags adorned with the company's signature script and the famous clock were the source of controversy following the chain's purchase by the (then) Dayton-Hudson Corporation in 1990 - new bags in (cheaper) brown paper received a storm of protest from the store's notoriously loyal following, leading the parent company to reinstate the green bags in short order.
The thing about Field's is that the historic and the contemporary co-exist beautifully in this store.
I don't care. It'll always be Field's to me.
3 Comments:
It's always so sad when a distinctive landmark gets taken over by a huge chain. :(
Thank you, Olga, for that wonderful tribute to our beloved Marshall Field's. A bunch of soulless, greedy swine that's what Macy's is. But, they don't call Chicago "Hog butcher to the world" for nothing.
The only thing that makes me sadder than the whole Marshall Field's thing is that you won't be back to Chicago this summer.
Maybe a pound of Frangos will help.
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