item 5 - Carl Levine interview, 1986 December 16

Carl Levine was born in 1929 in Bloomingdale, NJ, and died in his Manhattan apartment in 2004. Levine started in the home furnishings business working for his family's junior department store. After making market visits to Bloomingdale's for work, Levine became interested in the innovations he was seeing at the large department store and he joined the company in 1955. Starting as an assistant mattress buyer, Levine was promoted within the home furnishings department, eventually becoming the Sr. Vice President of the department in 1979, a position which he still held in 1986. Levine played a large role in Bloomingdale's development of period reproduction furniture and worked closely with Barbara D'arcy in the creation of Bloomingdale's themed model rooms. This interview was conducted by Estelle Ellis, founder of Business, Inc., a business market research firm.

Estelle Ellis was born on November 12, 1919 in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating from Hunter College in 1940, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and a minor in Journalism, Ellis began a career in publishing. Ellis was crucial in the founding of Seventeen magazine in 1943, assisting Helen Valentine with design and advertising for the magazine. In 1958, Ellis founded Business Image, Incorporated, a creative marketing firm that stressed the importance of market and product positioning. Her company worked primarily with Condé Nast publications but other businesses, such as Yves Saint-Laurent Fragrances, Evan-Picone, AT&T, and Scoville, hired Business Image as well. Beginning in the mid-1960s, Ellis began working with the Fashion Institute of Technology, creating programs and fundraising campaigns to help with financial support. During the 1990s, Ellis focused on writing, co-authoring At Home with Books: How Booklovers Live With and Care for Their Libraries (1995), At Home with Art: How Art Lovers Live With and Care for Their Treasures (1999), and The Booklover's Repair Kit: First Aid for Home Libraries (2000). Estelle Ellis passed away on July 12, 2012.