“Give the lady what she wants” (Marshall Field slogan)
“Give the lady what she wants” is said to have been the motto of Marshall Field (1834-1906), the founder of Chicago’s Marshall Field & Company department store. “Give the lady what she wants, she will use it every day” was cited in a Missouri jewelry advertisement in 1910.
A book titled Give the Lady What She Wants!: The Story of Marshall Field & Company was published in 1952.
“The customer is always right” is another Marshall Field slogan.
Wikipedia: Marshall Field
Marshall Field (August 18, 1834 – January 16, 1906) was an American entrepreneur and the founder of Marshall Field and Company, the Chicago-based department stores. His business was renowned for its then-exceptional level of quality and customer service. Field is also known for some of his philanthropic donations, providing funding for the Field Museum of Natural History and donating land for the campus of the University of Chicago.
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The quotes “Give the lady what she wants” and “The customer is always right” are attributed to Field, though the latter may also be an invention of Harry Gordon Selfridge while employed by Field.
Chronicling America
9 December 1910, Marshall (MO) Republican, pg. 5, col. 2 ad:
Give the lady what she wants, she will use it every day.
The Kelley-Vawter Jewelry Co.
4 December 1937, Denton (MD) Journal, pg. 3 ad:
Open up your hearts, men and give the little lady what she wants.
(M. K. Newnam, Furnisher of Homes.—ed.)
OCLC WorldCat record
Give the lady what she wants! : ... the story of Marshall Field & Company
Author: Lloyd Wendt; Herman Kogan
Publisher: Chicago : Rand McNally, 1952.
Edition/Format: Print book : English : [1st ed.]
14 February 1952, Wayland (IA) News, pg. 2, col. 3 photo caption:
CHICAGO—Towering twenty-feet tall and aglitter with 101 candles (there’s one on top to grow on), this giant cake rises to the occasion of Marshall Field & Company’s one-hundredth birthday. Since its founder first declared, “Give the lady what she wants!”, the Chicago store has grown with this city, the Midwest and the nation.
OCLC WorldCat record
Give the lady what she wants
Author: Lena Horne; Lennie Hayton; Ralph Burns
Publisher: Camden, N.J. : RCA Victor, [1958]
Edition/Format: Music LP : Popular music : English
OCLC WorldCat record
“GIVE THE LADY WHAT SHE WANTS”—AS LONG AS IT IS MACY’S
Author: Mark D Bauer
Publisher: [Philadelphia, PA : Temple University School of Law, c1988-
Edition/Format: Article Article : English
Publication: Temple law review. 80, no. 4, (2007): 949
Database: ArticleFirst
OCLC WorldCat record
What the lady wants : a novel of Marshall Field and the Gilded Age
Author: Renée Rosen
Publisher: New York : NAL, New American Library, [2014] ©2014
Edition/Format: Print book : Fiction : English
Database: WorldCat
Summary:
“In late-nineteenth-century Chicago, visionary retail tycoon Marshall Field made his fortune wooing women customers with his famous motto: “Give the lady what she wants.” His legendary charm also won the heart of socialite Delia Spencer and led to an infamous love affair. The night of the Great Fire, as seventeen-year-old Delia watches the flames rise and consume what was the pioneer town of Chicago, she can’t imagine how much her life, her city, and her whole world are about to change. Nor can she guess that the agent of that change will not simply be the fire, but more so the man she meets that night…. Leading the way in rebuilding after the fire, Marshall Field reopens his well-known dry goods store and transforms it into something the world has never seen before: a glamorous palace of a department store. He and his powerhouse coterie-including Potter Palmer and George Pullman-usher in the age of robber barons, the American royalty of their generation. But behind the opulence, their private lives are riddled with scandal and heartbreak. Delia and Marshall first turn to each other out of loneliness, but as their love deepens, they will stand together despite disgrace and ostracism, through an age of devastation and opportunity, when an adolescent Chicago is transformed into the gleaming White City of the Chicago’s World’s Fair of 1893. “—