The Charivari stores were founded by Jon Weiser, his mother Selma and his sister Barbara Weiser in 1967. In 1976, the men's department relocated to its own store across the street. That year,
Esquire magazine included Charivari in a feature on America's eight top stores. A sixth location on the
Upper East Side was added in 1992. The Upper West Side locations were designed by Alan J. Buchsbaum. Writing about the closing of the chain in
The New Yorker, Rebecca Mead noted: "If, during the nineteen-eighties, you wanted your clothes to indicate that you were a) in the know, fashion wise; b) a bit of an intellectual; and c) not afraid of wearing unfinished seams or jackets turned inside out, or other things that might, if not worn with sufficient élan, look like fashion disasters, then you shopped at Charivari." The founders attributed the company's decline and eventual failure to poor financial planning, the recession in the 1990s and its own success: the availability of the avant-garde designers championed by Charivari in both the designers' own stores and at larger department stores made a store like Charivari unnecessary. The
Charivari Detroit Musical Festival was named in tribute to the brand. == Activities ==