Beginning in 1948 with a Gentilly location, Maison Blanche started expanding beyond the city’s urban core. Stores in Metairie, Gretna, New Orleans East, and Baton Rouge followed. However, many of these branches didn’t last through the 1980s, and Dillard’s eventually purchased Maison Blanche only to have the last remaining store, its flagship, close for good in 1997, 100 years after its founding. The building is now the home of the Ritz-Carlton hotel.

Maison Blanche was famous for its window displays, particularly Christmas scenes that included Mr. Bingle, its seasonal store mascot. The store’s visual merchandising department, colloquially known as the display department, was key in this regard, producing window installations, in-store displays, seasonal and promotional displays, and mannequin styling. The display department worked closely with other departments such as advertising and the fashion office to present exhibitions and displays that were cohesive storewide and utilized skilled workers such as carpenters, painters, artists, and decorators. Visual merchandising required a specialized skill set: Tony James, who was the director of the display department in 1973, stated that “a good color and design sense is essential along with an ability to put art forms together and a feel for fashion.”

Lolita Nelson (1920–1995) was a member of the display department for about 40 years, beginning at Maison Blanche’s flagship store in 1942 and finishing her career at the Clearview location in Metairie. Throughout her tenure, Nelson worked on window displays and special events such as the 1959 commemoration of the Canal Street flagship’s 50th anniversary. In 1966, she helped to produce the Best of the World Festival. Held at the store’s Canal Street location, the festival displayed 850 flags, had telephone stations at which shoppers could pick up a handset and listen to recorded greetings in different languages, included an authentic tearoom sent from Japan, and featured demonstrations from international chefs, textile workers, and wood-carvers.

The Historic New Orleans Collection recently received a collection of Lolita Nelson’s Maison Blanche display department papers, donated by Nelson’s daughter, Jacquelin Nelson Kellogg. Through photographic prints, negatives, and sketches, it provides documentation of Maison Blanche’s visual merchandising practices from 1921 through 1981. In addition to finished installations, the images also go behind the scenes to show the display team building and installing sets. The collection includes a series of mannequin catalogs, which depict changing fashion and style trends. Additionally, Nelson retained Maison Blanche’s employee newsletters Shop Talk and Entre Nous from 1944 to 1981, which document the changes in the store’s corporate culture over the years. The collection brings to the forefront a behind-the-scenes department that was responsible for making Maison Blanche a magical place for its shoppers and a local landmark.