Business: Clearance Sale

Another Fifth Avenue folding

Manhattan's Fifth Avenue is a rugged road for fashion retailers. Those that have failed in the past decade include Best & Co., Arnold Constable and Peck & Peck. Now one of the street's very biggest names will disappear: Bonwit Teller. For most of its 80-year history, Bonwit's specialized in dressing well-heeled women in genteel elegance. But the store moved from mere affluence to a position of real fashion influence in the 1960s, when its sharp-tongued president, Mildred Custin, decided that Bonwit's should take the lead in promoting the designs...

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