The Oregonian
By Laura Gunderson
Deep in Cleo Cummings' employment file with Macy's, and before that Meier & Frank, is a copy of the letter her grandfather wrote to help his 16-year-old granddaughter get a job at the downtown Portland store in 1938.
Cummings got the job, loved it and stayed -- for 73 years.
In her signature red up-do and two-inch black heels, Cummings retired from Macy's last Friday at Lloyd Center with family, long-time co-workers, executives and models she'd tapped for the fashion shows she organized years earlier.
They came to celebrate one of the department store chain's top saleswomen. But Cummings may be more important to company executives who say she created the much-copied personal shopper program, where she pushed scores of Portland shoppers into trying her favorite new fashions, while at the same time being lovingly honest when a fit faltered.
Cummings, who so fiercely has hidden her age that she missed a few years of pension pay-outs, hated to leave. She's cried often over the past few months at the thought, she admitted, choking up several times Friday as she talked about leaving.
"I'm not tired," she said, finding a seat and slipping the shoes off her black-stockinged toes, "but my feet are."
She loved fashion, and at that time department stores were at its core. She worked at Meier & Frank on and off through the next ten years, taking breaks only for a temporary move to California and to have her daughter. She returned full-time to the Portland chain in 1948.
Today, many retailers herald employees who stick around a decade. A few celebrate silver anniversaries. The Bureau of Labor Statistic's most recent tally shows the median tenure for a retail employee at a little more than three years -- an increase from the two and a half years employees reported in 2000.
"Cleo has always had such a commitment to the company," said Bruce Randall, a Macy's Inc., vice president and former manager of the Lloyd Center store during Cummings time there. "On her original contract, there was a line about 'serving Meier & Frank faithfully.' Cleo signed that and she absolutely has."
Cummings, who earned a two-year diploma from Girls Polytechnic High School, worked her way up through the years into the executive position of fashion director for Meier & Frank. She loved the job, but hated the public speaking component required in running the department store's regular fashion shows.
"She'd freeze in front of people," said Pati Palmer, a longtime friend of Cummings' and as Meier & Frank's former corporate home economist, a one-time colleague. So Palmer encouraged Cummings to join her in co-teaching fashion awareness classes to smaller groups of women. Cummings eventually overcame her fear and, after moving back to Lloyd Center's sales floor, she began giving regular presentations on trends.
Although she retained her executive title, Cummings was frustrated as she'd been moved around the company as others with advanced degrees were promoted, said Kevan Anderson, Cummings' niece. Still, she loved the work and always found a way to reinvent herself at every new station.
She'd been in a bit of a funk after moving to Lloyd Center in the early 1970s, when in need of some extra cash, she launched a side business helping women sift through their closets. For $50, she'd help clients toss clothes that didn't meet Cummings' high standards, make a list of what was needed to round out the wardrobe and visit Meier & Frank for certain pieces and accessories.
Grieving her mother's death, Cummings later shut down the business. But soon after, Palmer and others encouraged her to relaunch it within the Lloyd Center Meier & Frank.
The idea was approved by Judy Hofer, then president of Meier & Frank's Oregon stores, and soon Cummings had a long list of clients who made appointments to go see the hand-selected items chosen for them at the store. They'd clink glasses of "champagne" -- water in plastic cups -- and hunker down in her back room.
Her strategy when clients shied from a new style?
"You just put them behind that door and nothing was hard," said Cummings, wearing her go-to scarf and "something surprising on your shoulder" (in her case Friday, a sparkly crystal brooch). "They trusted me. I always told them if it didn't look good."
Cummings would take customers around the store for Christmas. Husbands knew right where to go for dead-on gifts. Soon, all Meier & Frank stores adopted the personal shopper program, followed by the entire May Company chain and eventually, competitors including Nordstom and Macy's.
Cummings' skills translated to company-topping sales.
In 1999, she was named to Meier & Frank's President's Club with $683,107 in sales that year. Two years earlier it was $577,500 and in 1991, $552,000.
"She broke my postage budget," said Randall, recalling the piles of cards Cummings would mail to her clients. Even just a couple years ago, the company struggled to get Cummings out the door each night if she hadn't met her personally set sales goals.
Cummings still has a goal for herself: Move on. She plans to volunteer at the Albertina Kerr gift shop in Portland and hopefully, with the Dress for Success program that provides professional clothing to low-income women hunting for jobs.
"I'm not going to sit at home, I'll be out trying to get into trouble," said Cummings, with a wink behind her dark glasses. "It's hard, but you have to learn to start all over again and not pout about it."
