HOUSTON – Local 2 investigates your privacy inside the dressing rooms at local department stores.
While you're taking off your clothes, we discovered at some stores, even when you close the door you're on display for all to see.
It's as easy as reversing the direction of the dressing room doors. When the fixed louvers are angled down and into the room, you can easily see in from the outside. From inside, you can't even tell if someone is standing right outside your door.
"I think anybody would probably be offended," shopper Angela Thompson said.
"To think that you could see me from the outside … the thought is uncomfortable," said Jaclyn Bobmanuel.
Local 2 Investigates showed both women our video of an intern donning a special T-shirt we had printed just for this project. We stood right outside her dressing room door with a video camera and asked random shoppers if they could read what her T-shirt said.
"If you can read this, you can see me naked," shopper Star Tipton read.
Almost everyone we asked got it right, and security expert Pat Murphy said that's what makes the doors wrong on so many levels.
"A picture's worth a thousand words, and I think you captured that," said Murphy.
Local 2 Investigates captured the video at two Galleria department stores: Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue. In other parts of the country, the indiscreet doors were discovered at Macy's, Sears, Marshalls, Ross and Dillard's.
When Local 2 Investigates asked Saks Fifth Avenue for an interview, a representative sent us a curt statement that read simply:
"We do not discuss our fitting room design or policies."
Neiman Marcus spokeswoman Ginger Reeder emailed the following statement:
"Our standard fitting room louvered door detail is the same for all fitting rooms in all stores. The current details have been consistent for the past 20 years. The louvers point down from the corridor outside the fitting room.
"Speaking to the privacy issue, there are degrees of privacy with louvered doors. The detail that Neiman Marcus uses is custom. We do not use prefabricated doors. Our custom details specify the width of the louver, the angle of the louver and the overlap of the louvers that each contribute to offering the maximum degree of privacy for a louvered door. Our louvers are also specified as finished hard wood vs. paint grade louvers that are used in prefabricated doors. This makes the louvers very rigid and less likely to bend or warp which might compromise privacy. Our doors are always locked from the outside and can be opened from the inside by an occupant without a key, but a key is always required to open the door from the outside. This offers the customer much more privacy than they might have in a fitting room with a curtain that can just be pulled back by anyone at anytime. Fitting rooms with curtains also tend to have gaps at the entrance providing a very clear view into the fitting room from the corridor. We have used curtains in the past and have received immediate complaints from customers requesting the locked louvered doors.
"Our dressing room areas are located off of the selling floor and access is monitored by both our sales associates and our security staff. Being able to observe our dressing rooms is part of the security we provide for our customers in our store, and our observation is not based on any voyeuristic reasons.
"We do not have spokesperson in Houston who can provide an on-camera response."
There doesn't appear to be anything illegal about the doors we discovered. Most of the dressing rooms do have signs to let customers know they are being monitored.
Statute 21.15 of the Texas Penal Code makes it a felony to monitor dressing rooms with a video camera only if the purpose is to invade someone's privacy. Retailers said that is not their intention.
