A black model based in New York City says she left Saks Fifth Avenue in tears last week after a sales associate ignored her, had a bad attitude, and generally discriminated against her when she went in to shop for wedding shoes.
Erica Wiltz shared the 'traumatizing and dehumanizing' on TikTok, explaining that she'd visited the luxury department store to find a pair of Jimmy Choo heels to wear with her wedding dress.
But rather than leave the store tottering a few inches higher, Erica felt small by the time she walked out, and accused a sales associate in the shoe department of declining to acknowledge her presence, making her feel 'invisible,' and refusing to answer her questions.
Speaking out: A black model based in New York City says she left Saks Fifth Avenue in tears last week after a sales associate ignored her and generally discriminated against her
Online: Erica shared the 'dehumanizing' on TikTok, explaining that she'd visited the luxury department store to find a pair of Jimmy Choo heels to wear with her wedding dress
Erika is set to say 'I do' in New Orleans next month and was getting ready for her final wedding dress fitting when she popped into the Saks Fifth Avenue flagship to purchase a pair of heels.
She said she was wearing a 'classic' all-black outfit with a Prada bag for the shopping trip, describing her look as 'chic' and 'put-together.'
She filmed herself waiting in a seemingly empty shoe department while the lone sales associate helped other customers.
'Patiently waiting and watching them help everyone else,' she wrote.
But, she said in a viral video that's reached one million viewers, she ultimately 'had to demand help' before he assisted her, and she 'left in tears' without making a purchase.
Replying to commenters, Erika didn't strictly say that she believed racism was the cause of her treatment, but she said he was 'discriminatory' and 'judged' her, leaving her 'heartbroken.'
'People have no idea how traumatizing and dehumanizing it is,' she said.
'It's wrong to discriminate against people, whether it was classism, racism, whatever it was,' she added.
In a follow-up video, Erika shared more details of the experience, explaining: 'My final fitting for my wedding dress was supposed to be today, so they said please come in with the show that you're wearing for the hem.'
Rude: She said she waited patiently while the sales associate helped other customers, but he never acknowledged that she was there
Bye: When he finished helping the last customer before he, she said, he just walked away
When she finally had to get his attention to help her, she says he had an 'attitude'
'I decided to go to Saks because I love going there, I've always had great experiences, and I wanted a Jimmy Choo wedding shoe. It was my dream to have a Jimmy Choo wedding shoe,' she went on.
'So I show up and I'm all joyful and enthusiastic about picking out my wedding shoe. So I'm in the Jimmy Choo section, and I'm watching the salesperson help someone else, who happened to be a white woman, but whatever, I wasn't thinking this at the time.
'So he's all in her face,' she recalled, 'and really being super attentive and just attending to her so carefully. They were taking a while but I was patient. I didn't say anything, I just kept looking at my wedding dress on my phone, holding it up to shoes ... just waiting.
She briefly wandered off to other shoe sections before coming back, making it clear she was waiting.
'He never acknowledged me, never said, "I'll be right with you," but it was clear that I was waiting. I left, came back, patiently waiting, all that,' she said.
'After he's done with the lady, and she closes out and everything, he never acknowledges my existence, I'm completely invisible, and he walks away,' she said.
'Until you experience that, you can't say s*** about that experience. Because that is the lowest a human could possibly feel,' she said.
'People have no idea how traumatizing and dehumanizing it is,' she said
Even at this point, she assumed the man would come back out to help her, but he didn't. Finally, she called out to him.
'Excuse me, can I please get some help?' she asked.
Though he finally helped her, she said he had a lot of 'attitude' and was 'very dry' and didn't want to answer any of her questions.
'The complete opposite of service he was giving to the woman before me,' she remarked.
'So obviously, I wasn't going to give him a sale,' she concluded.
A spokesperson for Saks told DailyMail.com that the company 'deeply regrets' the experience that Erika had in its store, adding that it always 'strives to ensure that every customer experience reflects out commitment to inclusivity, equality and respect for all'.
In a statement, the spokesperson added that the store is currently in communication with the model in order to better 'understand and resolve the situation'.
'We strive to ensure that every customer experience reflects our commitment to inclusivity, equality and respect for all,' the spokesperson shared.
'We deeply regret that Ms. Wiltz did not feel that she received the high quality service we aim to deliver and, as such, are engaging directly with her to understand and resolve the situation.
'Our team remains committed to treating everyone with respect and to ensuring Saks Fifth Avenue is a welcoming environment for all.'
This isn't the first time that Saks has been publicly accused of racism by black customers — and in fact, employees have also made charges.
Previously: In 2018, eight men who had worked at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York City filed a lawsuit against the store
In 2018, eight men who had worked at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York City filed a lawsuit against the store.
Attorney Derek Sells says the four black, two white, and two Hispanic men were subjected to a hostile work environment and then fired.
The suit, filed in New York, said the men 'were each forced to endure a pervasive pattern of discrimination and retaliation' and that 'their respective managers deliberately targeted them because of their race and/or age.'
Sells said managers for the men engaged in a range of actions including making it difficult to get customers from store foot traffic, using abusive language, not allowing promotions to happen, and letting younger, white colleagues get away with harassing behavior, all with the intention of moving toward a younger, whiter workforce.
Some of the plaintiffs said that even when they made sales targets, managers would find other metrics to evaluate them poorly.
ome of the plaintiffs had worked at the store for several years, Sells said, and the atmosphere changed to become more hostile after Hudson's Bay Co. acquired Saks in 2013.
An example, he said, was the computer system used to register customers' information.
The men in the suit claim the system was faulty and would generate error messages when they tried to input information, and they made repeated complaints to their managers without anything getting fixed.
Sells said the men would then be evaluated poorly for not registering enough customers, while younger, white employees were either helped with workarounds for the problem or not evaluated the same way.
Thomas Bisky, then 68, one of the two white plaintiffs, said he had been told in fall 2017 that he had been having his best sales quarter yet.
But Bisky, who had been working for Saks since 2011, was still given a warning for not registering enough customers.
He said he received no support to fix the error message problem despite making repeated complaints, and was terminated in January.
'It was quite clear to me that they wanted to get me out of there because I was of a certain age,' he said.
In March of this year, three black men who visited a Saks Fifth Avenue store in San Francisco said they were racially profiled, detailing how police detained them for hours despite doing nothing wrong.
They told KTVU that they were only at the store for about a half hour when police arrived, drew their guns, yelled profanities, and told them to get on the ground.
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