Peck & Peck was a New York-based retailer of private label women's wear prominent on Fifth Avenue. Founded by Edgar Wallace Peck and his brother George H. Peck, it began in New York in 1888 as a hosiery store, with early location near Madison Square. At Edgar Peck's death, Time magazine reported that the brothers once had to pay rent every 24 hours to a distrusting landlord, but now had 19 stores. It grew to 78 stores across the United States.
Peck & Peck was purchased in the 1970s by the Minneapolis-based retailing company Salkin & Linoff and, through a combination of poor/in-bred family management and widely decentralized locations, the chain was basically shut down and sold off in pieces.Some specific store locations of the chain were sold by Salkin & Linoff in the mid/late 1980s to H.C. Prange Co. of Sheboygan, Wisconsin (a few single stores may remain).
Peck & Peck was known for its classic clothes. Like Bonwit Teller and B. Altman and Company's post-World War II fashions, Peck & Peck personified and flourished in the pre-hippie era in New York when WASP fashion ruled stores and fashion magazines.The store had the distinction of being listed in Lisa Birnbach's The Official Preppy Handbook as one of the late, great "prep" retailers, along with New York stores like Best & Co. and Abercrombie & Fitch, both since revived.
To writers like Joan Didion, Peck & Peck was descriptor and shorthand for a certain fashion look. Some say that Hillary Clinton has a Peck & Peck look. A store classic was the simple A-shaped dress.
Other fashion retailers that grew in the wake of the closure of Peck & Peck were Ann Taylor and Talbots.
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