Christina Binkley

Pockets have long been a male/female divide.

Hermes scarf designers can be found in places from Poland to Japan, not to mention the U.S. post-office sorting room in Waco, Texas. Kermit Oliver, a longtime postal employee, has designed more than a dozen Hermes scarves.

Comfortably middle-class, I had shopped for years at the likes of Saks outlet Off Fifth, Banana Republic, and Zara. My mom raised me to believe clothes should be comfortable and practical, not frivolous.

The Hermes scarf is a coveted, much-collected symbol of success that defines the Paris-based luxury company. But it has no single designer. Rather, the scarves are designed by a far-flung array of freelance artists.

Our social mores no longer conform to a world where nice girls wear skirts that don't cling.

Clothes are particularly hard to value. While cars and high-tech gadgets - Maseratis, Audemars Piguet watches, and first-generation iPhones - offer not only performance but the cachet of a visibly rich item, clothing does less to convey what you spent on it. Clothes get stained and snagged, and they go out of style quickly.

Any woman who has attempted to slip a credit card into an inch-deep trouser pocket knows about the annoying puzzle of women's clothing: Pockets rarely work.

For more than a century, New York City has been home to a constellation of department stores whose openings, closings, and transformations have charted the fortunes and foibles of the city itself.