BARNEYS: A BUST
Retailer to close after long bankruptcy battle
Say goodbye to your Barneys store.
The iconic luxury retailer on Friday was sold to a licensing firm that plans to liquidate all seven of its existing locations after a rival bid to keep them in business failed to materialize.
Under a deal that marks the end of an era for chic, cuttingedge shopping, clearance sales are slated to begin in the coming weeks. The Madison Avenue location will be shuttered for good in February, said Jamie Salter, chief executive of Authentic Brands Group, a licensing firm that has scooped Barneys out of bankruptcy for $271 million.
This spring, the new owner will partner with Saks Fifth Avenue to open a nationwide chain of Barneys-branded boutiques inside department stores operated by Barneys’ old rival. That will include a 50,000-square-foot Barneys boutique occupying the fifth floor of Saks’ newly remodeled flagship in Manhattan.
In a Friday interview with The Post, Salter helped clear up confusion caused by conflicting announcements from ABG and Barneys’ landlord, which suggested the Madison Avenue store would remain open for at least another year.
Instead of a Barneys store, the flagship’s building at 660 Madison Ave. will become an as-yet-unnamed venue for temporary art exhibits and other, non-Barneys-related “experiential” events, he said.
Some of the exhibits next year will involve ABG’s other 50 brands, including the rights to cultural icons Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley, and designers Judith Leiber and Vince Camuto. It will occupy less than half of the nine floors and 230,000 square feet occupied by Barneys.
Despite those drastic changes, ABG plans to keep running Freds restaurant on the ninth floor, a longtime mecca for Midtown power lunchers, with plans to license out Freds to luxury developments overseas.
“We’ll use Madison Avenue as a lab and if we have success we’ll roll them out in other parts of the world,” Salter said.
Salter also said that the Barneys store in Boston — which was supposed to be the only store not to liquidate — will in fact close and be converted to a Saks Fifth Avenue store.
The luxury retailer’s landlord, Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp., said on Friday it had worked out a plan to “keep the Madison Avenue store open in a smaller footprint for the next 12 months while we continue to explore longer-term solutions.” Ashkenazy — blamed for Barneys’ August bankruptcy filing after it more than doubled the rent on Madison Avenue — said it was “saddened by the loss of jobs.”
Earlier Friday, Barneys Chief Executive Daniella Vitale stepped down. Barneys staff learned of Vitale’s departure through an e-mail after they gathered for a scheduled 9:30 a.m. meeting on Friday. The jobs of more than 2,000 employees face extinction.
“Please understand that we tried very hard to keep this out of court and to find a solution before filing,” Vitale wrote in the memo. “We were saddled with many issues long before this began, ones that were unfortunately exacerbated by a difficult macro environment and the loss of the Madison arbitration. While there are some things that we might have done differently, I don’t believe it would have changed the end result.”