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Tag: Elaine Winik

Homage to Howard Clothes and Times Square – Photo Documentary

As regular Consumer Grouch readers know, Howard Clothes is near and dear to my heart because it played a starring role in my dad’s family. While I have written pretty much everything I can already about Howard Clothes in three previous articles, I have since discovered many new photos. When I posted my first Howard Clothes article in September 2015, my dad has just been released from a four-month stay in the hospital and rehab after nearly dying from double pneumonia. By the time I posted my second article in January 2016, I had read Elaine Winik’s 1996 book entitled Still Looking Forward, which filled in some important details, along with hearing from many relatives of the founders. Elaine was the last surviving daughter of Sam Kappel, who founded this men’s clothing store with Joseph Langerman and Henry Marks. A few weeks later, I had the pleasure of talking to Elaine on the phone, and she graciously sent me a few clippings and photos that I added. Elaine passed away in September 2017, so she never got a chance to read the final chapter, which I posted in January 2020. My dad did, although he was nearly blind from macular degeneration by then and couldn’t see the images.  In September 2020, I finally decided to start an Instagram page devoted to NYC. Although the original intent was to showcase photos I took of NYC during my RISD years (1976-1980), I realized fairly quickly that I simply didn’t have enough vintage photos of my own to sustain this. Before my Brooklyn-born dad died of COVID-19 in December 2020, I promised him that I would honor his legacy by digitizing and posting vintage photos he took of his beloved NYC. I also looked for great vintage photos of NYC and gravitated to…

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Howard Clothes: The Final Chapter

  When I wrote the second article, Howard Clothes Tribute: Epilogue in January 2016, I thought I was done. Yet, this is still a topic of discussion in my family and clearly resonates with others, given the ongoing comments. As the sole surviving child of Samuel and Minnie Kappel, Elaine Winik provided a great deal of insight for the second article, as did her book Still Looking Forward, published in 1996. Elaine, who sadly passed away in September 2017, was a pillar of the Jewish community with a deep passion for and commitment to Israel. This article is dedicated to Elaine, her family, and all the relatives of the owners. In the last four years, I uncovered additional images and intriguing facts about Howard Clothes worthy of this final third article. The image below was being sold on eBay and I shared it with Elaine’s family members on Facebook. Unfortunately, nobody recognized anybody in the photo. Given the caption, I’m guessing this was a gathering for employees of one of the Brooklyn stores, rather than the factory.     The second photo is an undated Magic Lantern slide being sold on eBay. The back of the slide reads: A section of the Hand Sewing Department where the careful tailoring of our most skillful tailors is reflected in the fit and finish of Howard Clothes. It’s not a great photo technically, but it certainly has historic importance. I’m guessing it was taken in the 1940s or 1950s, given the media it was created on.     A Chicago Tribune article dated June 2, 1936 revealed that Howard Clothes made its first foray into the Midwest market with a store at the northwest corner of State and Quincy Streets in the Consumers Building at 220 South State Street. I found this great…

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Howard Clothes Tribute – Epilogue

It was really nice that so many family members reached out to me and commented on my first Howard Clothes article. This yielded a good deal of insight and information, which inspired the desire to write this epilogue. Based on my communications with family members, I found out Elaine Winik is the sole surviving child of Samuel and Minnie Kappel. I also discovered she wrote a book entitled Still Looking Forward, published in 1996. I decided to purchase a copy on Amazon and gave this to my dad to read first. After all, it was his family with the connection to Howard Clothes and to Minnie and her mother Mollie Sennowitz. Elaine’s book filled in a lot of blanks including first names of people who were unknown to me when I wrote the first article, and had escaped my dad’s memory at this point in life – he is 92 after all. A few weeks later, I had the pleasure of talking to Elaine on the phone, and she graciously sent me a few clippings and photos that I have added to this blog. My dad got a real kick out of this passage from Elaine’s book: After living with us, grandma came to my parents and said that although we all were wonderful to her, the house wasn’t kosher, and besides, she missed her Yiddish-speaking contemporaries. If mother and dad would pay rent to “the greenie,” (all immigrants were referred to as greenhorns) her newly arrived cousin from Russia, she would live with him and his wife. Of course we could come and visit her there. She also mentioned that it would be very nice if my parents would furnish the apartment for the “the greenie” as he had no money at all. They did, as they asked.

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