Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/372562
W hen an acquaintance passed by Louise Eiseman as she was having her portrait taken for this story, she called to her friend, "I'm having my picture taken for the centerfold of Playboy!" The 84-year-old stylish, beautiful and witty matriarch of Eiseman Jewels has held court for 50 years at the family's eponymous store in NorthPark Center — the last remaining original tenant from when the shopping center opened in 1965. Her beloved and equally stylish husband Richard (Dick) Eiseman founded his jewelry emporium in 1964 and passed away from Parkinson's disease in 1996. Son Richard Eiseman took the helm, having earned his allowance as a teenager stacking watch boxes. After studying at the Gemological Institute of America in New York and learning the business at the knee of his father, Richard became the visionary behind Eiseman Jewels. But the heart of the company is arguably Louise Eiseman, whose business card reads "Queen Mum." She can still be found in the store from time to time, greeting guests with the same hospitality and courtesy that has sustained Eiseman Jewels over the past half- century. In celebration of the store's golden anniversary, the Eisemans recently completed renovations including an 800-square-foot space dedicated to an extensive collection of Rolex timepieces, which opened last November, thus expanding the footprint to 4,000 square feet. Louise, a devoted patron of UT Southwestern medical school and longtime docent at the Dallas Museum of Art, is as passionate about philanthropy as she is about jewels. With a sweet smile and a beautiful strand of pearls draped about her neck, the Dallas native recalls with pinpoint clarity how her hometown has changed over the years, the glamour of decades past and meeting Mr. Eiseman. GROWING UP IN DALLAS. I just love Dallas. I've never known anywhere else. I was born in the old St. Paul hospital. When I was a little girl at Walnut Hill grammar school, Dallas was a cotton town. If the weather changed, school was let out, and we picked cotton with our friends. We either rode our bikes or took the bus to school — our parents couldn't afford to use gasoline. MEETING MR. EISEMAN. My aunt and Dick's mother were friends in Atlanta. Dick came here to work for Reliable Stores [a corporation that operated furniture and jewelry stores in Texas and several other states], which sold everything from rifles to cookware to diamonds. My aunt called my mother and said, "This nice Dicky Eiseman is coming to Dallas to work. Would you introduce him to some young people?" We had him over for dinner, but I didn't even bother to sit at the table because he was 26, and I was a teenager. For my 16th birthday, I took my three best friends and their dates to the Century Room in the Adolphus Hotel for dinner. The hotel had an ice skating rink [from 1936 to 1965]. We didn't have credit cards in those days, so Mother said, "Daddy and I will come down later, and then we'll pay the bill." I said, "You can't do that!" I was too embarrassed to have my parents come, so they invited that nice Dicky Eiseman, got him a date, and he chaperoned my party. I never thought much about him afterwards. Then years later, he returned. He went to work for another firm in Houston, called his friends in Dallas and said, "I'm back in Texas and would like to come to Dallas. Are there some girls there you could fix me up with?" They said, "Well, Louise has grown up!" We got married June 22, 1953 in my parents' backyard. It's the hottest June 22 on record to this day — 103 degrees in the shade. The candles on my mother's dining room table were just melting. IN THE '60S … Braniff Airlines was very important. We were excited because it was very glamorous. I went out to the Braniff hangar to watch Alexander Calder paint one of the airplanes. I remember that Mary Wells Lawrence, the wife of Harding Lawrence [president of Braniff], was a fabulous advertising person [who became successful with her Braniff advertising campaign]. She was the one who created the Alka-Seltzer "plop plop, fizz fizz." EISEMAN EARLY YEARS. We had leased departments in stores all over Texas and in Balliets, which is like a little Neiman Marcus in Oklahoma City (I bought a lot of gorgeous clothes from there — I just gave a bunch of them away to the Dallas Historical Society and to the Denton Collection). We were also at Titche-Goettinger for a long time. Over the years, Stanley Marcus asked Dick to run his jewelry department. We were very friendly with the Marcus family — my sister and Stanley's daughter were classmates in high school and college. Same thing with the Zale family; M.B. Zale was so nice and wonderful to us and treated us like his own children. Both men said to Dick separate times, "If you don't go to work for me, go into business for yourself." We figured if Stanley Marcus and M.B. Zale told him, then this was the thing to do. ENTER NORTHPARK. We decided to go into NorthPark Center because I had known Raymond and Patsy Nasher for years. I had every confidence in the world that they would do the right thing. Titche's was going to expand here [from their downtown flagship], and they asked us to bring our jewelry with them. When Titche's [which occupied the current Dillard's space] changed its name to Joske's, we moved to a leased department in Frost Bros., a very high-end store with women's ready-to-wear, jewelry and shoes. That store was where Tiffany & Co. is now. After Frost Bros. went bankrupt, we moved across the hall to this space in 1990. We have been the only family-owned jewelry store in NorthPark. There was Zales, but there were so many of them, and Neiman Marcus had their jewelry department, but we were a much more mom-and-pop operation. We've been here ever since. SUBTLE RECOGNITION. People learned about us through word of mouth. We were always happy to loan jewelry to a ball chairman — we have jeweled several ball chairmen every year. They'll say, "Oh, this diamond necklace? It's from Eiseman's." We wanted to be in the background but still out there. PRECIOUS CARGO. Fifty years ago, we had two kids and drove a station wagon. Dick was delivering a necklace to this lady's house. He presented it to her, then her husband said to the butler, "Would you bring Mr. Eiseman's car around?" The husband walked out, looked at the car and said, "You brought this expensive necklace over here in that station wagon?" Dick went out the next day and bought a Lincoln Continental because if they thought he should be in a fancy car, maybe he better be! SOCIAL CIRCLES. One of my dear friends was Merle Levy. She was married to Irvin Levy and died of cancer about 25 years ago. The Levys have given millions of dollars to Dallas charities. Irvin was president of the Dallas Museum of Art and was one of the three musketeers, along with Harry Parker and George Charlton, who brought in Wendy Reves' art collection. My father and George Dahl were friends and neighbors — George did all the architecture and art deco buildings for the Texas State Fair in 1936. Annette Strauss, who was mayor of Dallas, was a good friend of mine. She was chairman of everything as far as fund-raising was concerned. One of my good buddies was Betty Chambers. She and I played tennis together, and her husband, Jim, was the publisher of the Dallas Times Herald. He was also a mentor to Dick. We had dinner and went to parties with them. IMPORTANCE OF BEING ELEGANT. I don't think anybody I knew back in those days wore blue jeans except when they were on their own ranch. They didn't wear jeans to the grocery store. Everybody was much more elegantly dressed. My husband was beautifully dressed. While telling a story at his funeral, Richard said, "When we went on Indian Guides camp-outs, my daddy was the only one who wore monogrammed pajamas." Dick really liked elegance, and I think that is the basis for us today. ROYAL MOMENT. [When Queen Elizabeth visited Austin in May 1991] we did the jewelry for Ann Richards, who was governor of Texas. Not that we could even compare to Queen Elizabeth's jewelry, but we wanted to have something elegant. We have a picture of Dick with Ann Richards and the jewelry, and the queen is coming down the street. It was really fun. FAVORITE JEWELRY. I love pearls. If you can only have one piece of jewelry, have a strand of pearls. For my 80th birthday, which was almost five years ago, the children gave me two strands. I think pearls are so complementary to any woman. SUCCESS SECRETS. I think it's integrity. We have elegance, sincerity. The other person's feelings come first. We have a great team. It's not just Richard, [it's] everybody we work with — our vendors that are very kind and supportive, our associates in the store. It's teamwork. Whatever we do, it should be the finest, the most truthful and the most wonderful. BY LINDEN WILSON. PORTRAIT SHAYNA FONTANA. STYLE DNA LOUISE EISEMAN "I LOVE PEARLS. IF YOU CAN ONLY HAVE ONE PIECE OF JEWELRY, HAVE A STRAND OF PEARLS." –LOUISE EISEMAN Louise, with husband Dick, wearing a custom Eiseman South Sea pearl and pink tourmaline necklace, 1987