Linda Dresner, Military Salesperson, Dies at 88

Linda Dresner, a former model who for four-and-a-half decades maintained a distinctive voice in luxury shopping as a purveyor of some of the world’s most sophisticated and dynamic designers, died peacefully at home on Monday. He was 88 years old.

Through his Park Avenue and Michigan stores, Dresner sold designers such as Jil Sander, Maison Margiela, Yohji Yamamoto, Ann Demeulemeester, Claude Montana, Vetements, Dries Van Noten and Stella McCartney, as well as Zoran and LouLou Studio. But he always wanted to discover new creative talent.

“Linda was an inspiring and beloved figure in the world of fashion,” said Sander. “We had a close and wonderful working relationship and he was a great supporter of Jil Sander. I was impressed by his store in New York and it inspired me with the designer JW Fred Smith. After that I worked with his sponsor Michael Gabellini in my sales projects. Linda will always have a special place in my heart for all her achievements and her level of taste.”

“Linda was like a sister to me,” said Marion Greenberg, a close friend and publicist. “She was a constant source of inspiration, always curious and pushing the creative envelope – from her beautiful, clean, artistically designed stores, to fashion designers with her exquisite taste.

He was born in Detroit on Dec. 8. 1937 at Idabelle and Morris Varkle, Dresner began his career as a model before finding his true calling as a salesman. He got married at the age of 17.

In the 1970s, Dresner and a friend, Hattie Belkin, opened Hattie’s in Franklin, Mich., where they sold designer goods in a 300-square-foot space. They split after six years and Dresner went out on his own and opened his Birmingham store, a modest 700 square foot store on the second floor of the Somerset Mall in Troy, Mich.

In 1983, Dresner took his vision to New York City by opening a second store at 484 Park Avenue, near 59th Street. It quickly became a destination for the most discerning fashion shoppers including friends and celebrities. The store was known for supporting obscure fashion labels and avant-garde designers years before many became household names. For nearly 25 years, the Manhattan store stood as one of the most influential independent fashion retailers in the country.

Over the years Dresner’s clients have included Gloria Vanderbilt, Carine Roitfeld, Wendy Murdoch, Uma Thurman and Scarlett Johansson. Jacqueline Onassis and her sister-in-law Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy were also among the store’s famous customers.

“Jackie felt like the store was a quiet place for her,” Dresner previously told WWD. He used to sit quietly in the dressing room and eat lunch, and in his sweet, sweet voice he would look around and say, ‘Oh, it’s so beautiful.’ He bought from time to time. He didn’t cry. He bought a very old raincoat. She liked to watch women try things on and look in the mirror and say, ‘I wish I could wear that’ about the styles that were out there.”

Dresner ran his stores the old-fashioned way. He attracted customers through word of mouth, eschewed online sales and believed that his customers liked personal experiences. He kept his windows and sold very small floors.

The Park Avenue store closed in 2008 due to rising rents and the Great Recession, as well as rising competition and widespread discounting by department stores. He decided to focus on his store in Michigan, where there was less competition, but a smaller audience. However, the Michigan store always had panache and maintained its unique position in the retail space. He decided to close the site in 2021. “This is great for me,” Dresner told WWD. “It’s been a long time. Great times. People coming in tell me it’s sad when I close the shop, and there’s nothing to replace it.

Dresner moved his business to a three-story, 6,000-square-foot location at 299 West Maple Road in downtown Birmingham, but with time running out and business becoming more difficult with the pandemic, that store also closed. She says: “I have a happy husband, and we will spend more time together.

He thought of his stores as a “big closet,” Dresner said. “I think about putting clothes together as I would wear them.” I bought John Galliano in an interesting little way. Getting up in the morning is one thing, but I also show clothes in a certain way. I would wear a Galliano dress with non-Galliano shoes and put a jacket or topper from another designer over the dress. I paired Margiela with someone dressed like Balenciaga. ”

But that was not the case with some other designers. “I rarely mix Comme des Garçons with anything else,” he said. “Rei Kawakubo has such a strong and unique signature that it still seems very special.”

Many in the fashion and retail industry considered Dresner a visionary and part of a rare breed of female entrepreneurs, such as Martha Phillips and Sara Fredericks who also created small, high-end and influential stores on Park Avenue, as well as Joan Weinstein with her Ultimo store in Chicago. All three of them are dead. They were all at the forefront of the latest fashion trends and helped raise the profile of many emerging designers. High society women and famous people came to their doors, especially for those special programs, afternoon cocktails and high levels of service. The closing of the Dresner stores highlighted how several well-known, high-fashion stores have gone out of business in recent years, including Barneys New York, Charivari, and Henri Bendel.

Dresner was as committed to philanthropy as he was to fashion. She served as a trustee of the Detroit Opera and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, where she and her third husband, Edward C. Levy Jr., were longtime supporters and dedicated audience members. He was a longtime board member and member of the Fashion Advisory Council in the College of Creative Studies, where he endowed the Linda Dresner Chair in Fashion Design in perpetuity. He also serves on the board of directors of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and was honored in 2016 by the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute. Together with her husband, she founded the Edward C. and Linda Dresner Levy Foundation, which supports scholarships for American students studying in Israel.

She is survived by her husband Edward, as well as her sons Mark and Steven; his sister Tisha; granddaughters, Samantha and Lauren, and several great-grandchildren.

A service honoring Linda Dresner will be held Monday, 10 a.m. at Ira Kaufman Chapel, 18325 W. Nine Mile Road, Southfield, Mich. The family requests that donations be made to the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.