Another One Bites the Dust...

Almost. According to Moody's yesterday, Loehmann's clothing stores will soon be joining the ranks of the financially insolvent. Funny how that happens when businesses are held to the same credit standards the rest of us schmucks have to live by. But Loehmann's? The loss of a great international chain of bargain-bin designer-label pantyhose shills signals a fundamental shift the basic life processes of the American people.

Seriously, how did these people stay in business in the first place?

I have several traumatic childhood memories of visiting Loehmann's with my mother in the 1980's and possibly 90's. If you are a woman over the age of 25, with a depression-era female relative, you probably have the same post-traumatic stress syndrome symptoms.

Loehmann's contributed to the negative body images of young girls everywhere by providing, not the traditional minuscule, poorly-lit individual changing rooms, but one, giant, communal, mirrored-in-the-round, poorly-lit changing room. An octagon of terror without the chain-link fencing. On numerous occasions, I and my sisteren (??) were exposed to the lumpy, calcified flesh of anonymous elderly ladies, those with no decorous sense of modesty. These ladies bared all (and I mean all) to the harsh assessment of those wrap-around mirrors, the ones that allowed no escape for small children hiding behind the returns rack. Garters, stockings, brassieres, "support garments" of all shapes, compositions and styles, I think a corset or two (and not the cool types, either), hairy legs and crotches, the horrors unfolded in a slow-motion ballet similar to the elephant scene in Fantasia sans cuteness.

Admittedly, it has been many years since I approached the hallowed halls of Loehmann's (which may be their problem), so they might have subdivided the Octagon of Dystopia into traditional changing rooms. Perhaps, in an attempt to boost flagging sales, they abandoned the 1930's in favor of something slightly modern: privacy.

Still, if a cheaper version of TJMaxx can't make it in today's economic climate, we must be headed down a slippery slope.

RIP, Loehmann's, RIP.