As Its Closure Looms, New York Fashion Fans Look Back on Century 21

Live in New York City long enough and eventually you will come to know a Century 21 bride, just as you will a rent-control lifer and the original Original Ray’s. I know two, women whom no aisle could cow into paying full price. It was a New York place for New York people — those who live here and those who only visit — a “secret handshake,” in the words of my colleague Christopher Bonanos, for those too in the know to overpay. The discount chain, founded in 1961 by Al and Sonny Gindi, Syrian American cousins from an émigré Jewish family, had grown into an empire stretching as far south as Florida and west to Philadelphia and Jersey. But its heart and roots were in New York, especially its sprawling, congested Cortlandt Street store, which the September 11 attacks enrubbled but couldn’t destroy. Read more at The Cut.