Enid Nemy wrote in the New York Times obituary on September 10, 1996, that Martha Phillips was a “notable force in luxury fashion retailing for more than 60 years, and was an early supporter of many of today’s leading designers.” In the 1980s there were four elegant Martha shops with sales approaching $40 million: Park Avenue, Trump Tower, Palm Beach, and Bal Harbour. The Trump Tower shop closed after a few years, and all but the Palm Beach shop were closed in a bankruptcy filing in 1992. Nemy quotes Pauline Trigère, who did business with Martha, Inc. for almost fifty years, who said, “There was never anybody like her and there won’t be anyone like her. She developed a special knowledge of who her customer was – from the very first client, she knew what she was doing.” Oscar de la Renta is quoted as saying that Martha was “the last of the great ladies of retailing with a true grasp of the luxury business and a tremendous sense of quality.” Geoffrey Beene described Martha as “an icon to an audience of a more frivolous era of dressing – steeped in vanity and femininity.”
The 1980s | An Age of Excess 