After 45 years, Edith's Lingerie set to close

From behind the center counter of a store that sells primary-colored house coats and silk bras alongside black boxers patterned with bright red lips, Anne Zuckerman stood with a customer discussing the woman's options for undergarments as though it were an art, and her personal concerns as though they were her primary responsibility.

After having catered to the Princeton community for 45 years, Edith's Lingerie, 170 Nassau Street, will close in August. Known to University coeds as the pink place to flock to before formals and house parties, Edith's reputation has spread through the town's community and beyond for its selection of merchandise and personal approach to its clientele.

Zuckerman, daughter of the store's founder, pointed to a Philadelphia Inquirer article next to the dressing room that cited the shop, and related an anecdote about a time that two tourists in Turkey were talking about Edith's in a cab.

It is a family love for lingerie that has perpetuated the success of the store.

"It was genetics," said Zuckerman. "I either knew bras or I didn't get born."

Zuckerman's mother, Edith, who passed away three years ago, was born in Hungary and trained in corsette-making in Vienna. Upon moving to Princeton, Edith began working at Bamberger's — now owned by Macy's — where Zuckerman said a customer told her mother "she should open a store since she had such an expert knowledge of lingerie."

Despite a lack of funds to fully fill the space, with the help of her parents, Edith opened her first store on Chambers Street in 1956.

"Because she didn't have enough money for merchandise," Zuckerman said, "she filled the store with boxes and marked the ones that weren't empty with X's."

The more Edith sold, the more she bought, until she had earned enough to buy the shop next door. The store then moved to 30 Nassau Street where it remained until five years ago, when Zuckerman moved it to its present location.

Despite its physical moves, Edith's has maintained the hospitality and service that keep its clients coming back.

Zuckerman said that her mother always kept a dog bowl outside of the store in the summer and biscuits inside, along with graham crackers for children. And though the graham crackers are gone, a playmobile set sits at the front of the store — for children whose mothers are browsing the store.

Edith always attended to the needs of every customer, Zuckerman said, and, with a smile, recalled a time that her mother made spats by hand because "a little old lady couldn't find them [anywhere else]."

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"Over the years my mother always fixed things for people, and I do the same thing," said Zuckerman. "It's fun to have someone come in with a need and be able to fill that need," she said.

"For example," she said, "a young woman came in earlier who needed a certain bra for a costume, so I made a regular bra into a halter."

Zuckerman also enjoys the creativity of her work. She said she always has to keep herself amused, and lifted up a pillow on a ledge in the front of the store the cover was made from a pair of tiger print silk boxers that had not been sold.

Zuckerman said she will be closing her store to maintain the quality of service that her mother established when she opened her first boutique nearly half a century ago.

"You can say this has worked for 50 years and bang your head against the wall or you can say that this has worked for 50 years and I'm going to take what I know and move ahead," said Zuckerman.

Zuckerman will soon announce the launching of her Website, which she says will sell the kind of merchandise Edith's sells now, with the addition of a page geared toward college-age students. Zuckerman said she realized college students like to shop in the middle of the night and have a hard time finding the kind of undergarments they are looking for when, "for the most part, if you look up lingerie there's a big sleaze factor."

And while she said she is taking her mother's idea into the cyber world, she will also maintain Edith's legacy in the town where it all began.

Zuckerman will open an office in Princeton to service the special needs of her clientele. Her phone number will be on the Website, and if customers want to try on merchandise or have lingerie custom fit, they can visit Zuckerman's office.

Yet despite Zuckerman's claim that her transplanted store will serve the same purposes, many patrons still lament the closing of the neighborhood institution.

Geraldine Getzow, who recently moved away from Princeton and met Edith and Zuckerman 10 years ago, said a person could walk up and down Nassau Street on any given Saturday and find dozens of people who had shopped at Edith's.

"There's nothing quite like the personal service," Getzow said. "And there are very few stores like that that are still left."