The future descends upon Owings Mills Fashion Mall


Wham! Blam! Shazam! Ladies and gentlemen, the future, in all its retail glory, descended upon Owings Mills, Maryland, on August 26, 1986. Forget your quaint little Main Streets, your dusty emporiums with their creaking floorboards and polite, whispered transactions. This, my friends, was the Owings Mills Fashion Mall, a gleaming, chrome-and-glass titan of commerce, a veritable cathedral of consumption, and its Grand Opening was nothing short of a Happening of the highest order. 820,000 square feet of air-conditioned paradise, 155 stores and eateries beckoning like sirens to the upwardly-mobile masses, 26 minutes from downtown Baltimore.

There they were, the shoppers of the eighties, those status-anxious strivers in their pastel Lacoste polo shirts and pleated khakis, the women in shoulder-padded blazers and leg-warmers, fur coats draped over their shoulders even in the summer swelter—because why not? This wasn't just a mall; it was the Fashion Mall, tres chic, a shrine to the American dream where you could drop a paycheck on imported Italian leather, and stroll upon imported French marble floors speckled with gold dust. Champagne toasts! Pink feathers cascading from the vaulted ceilings like confetti from capitalist heaven! 

And what did they see? Not just a mall, oh no. This was a Fashion Mall, mind you, with all the capital F's and M's it deserved. A colossal edifice designed to liberate the suburban soul from the humdrum, the beige, the utterly un-fabulous. You could be Eurotrash for a day, and all it took was a valid credit card.

Families from the new tract houses, yuppies from the office parks along I-795, even the old-timers from the countryside, all converging on Red Run Boulevard, where the main entrance yawned open like the mouth of plenty. Parking? Five thousand three hundred spaces, a vast asphalt ocean reflecting the midday sun, Caprice Classics and Country Squires nosing in like whales to the feast.

The anchors loomed like cathedrals: Saks Fifth Avenue, that bastion of Fifth Avenue elegance transplanted to the burbs, where socialites in pearls fingered cashmere sweaters priced for the Fortune 500 set. Bamberger's, with its towering displays of housewares and linens, promising domestic bliss in every aisle. Hecht's, the local hero, stocked with everything from appliances to apparel, where the middle-class matrons haggled over sales racks like it was the last days of Rome. 

And the specialty shops! Two stories of temptation: The first Banana Republic in the area, back when it was a "travel and safari" store, not just an overpriced GAP. A fleet of radio-control helicopters lifting off inside Brookstone! The Conservatory atrium alive with the green of topiary and the chatter of fashion models in designer gowns. It was a symphony of Muzak and materialism, escalators humming upward to the gods of glamour, fountains tinkling like liquid silver. Young couples, hand in hand, dreaming of wedding registries; teenagers in frosted jeans, pooling allowances for hair metal cassette tapes at the music store; executives pausing mid-stride to ogle a Rolex that screamed "I've arrived!"

Here, in the heart of Owings Mills, a new kind of town square had been forged, a climate-controlled utopia where desires were not just indulged, but actively manufactured.

What a scene! What a spectacle! The Owings Mills Fashion Mall, opening its pearly gates to the suburban hordes, proving once again that in America, the real religion is retail, and the pews are lined with marble. God bless the cash flow.

Location: Owings Mills, MD, USA

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