When just about everybody who was anybody in Dallas suddenly began sleeping on candy-striped bed sheets three years ago, they had a reasonable explanation : "Mr. Stanley said it was the thing to do." Mr. Stanley is Stanley Marcus, 48, president of the famed Neiman-Marcus luxury specialty store, and the benevolent dictator of fashion not only for Dallas but for the whole Southwest. He has made himself so mainly by superb showmanship and a solemn dedication to his job that causes competitors to refer waspishly to Neiman's as "The Cathedral."
Last week Showman Marcus put on his biggest show of...