From the Cut
A department store in limbo.
“If Barneys is going under, is anything on sale?”
the revolving doors still revolve, the greeters still greet, but the mood at Barneys is glum. The department store—where Andy Warhol and Carrie Bradshaw both shopped—is in bankruptcy. Once upon a time, Barneys was shorthand for a kind of sophistication that didn’t take itself too seriously, a place where New Yorkers would go to seek solace or celebration in spending. At the moment, it is a cautionary tale, mismanaged and overextended, flattened and floated on hedge-fund dollars. This August, following a lengthy dispute and arbitration with its landlord over a rent hike on the Madison Avenue flagship, Barneys filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In late October, shoppers milled under a cloud. What will happen? some were overheard to say. And, a little more shrewdly, Is anything on sale?
It is not news that department stores are struggling. Neiman Marcus is contending with nearly $5 billion in debt, and Nordstrom, which just opened its mammoth new store in midtown, has been reporting consecutive year-overyear revenue declines. Founded as a men’s discount clothier in 1923 by Barney Pressman, the “Cut-Rate King,” Barneys eventually upscaled itself into a temple of only–in–New York esoterica: Giorgio Armani suits before they were anywhere else in America, Comme des Garçons long before Rei Kawakubo and her creations were enshrined in the Met. “It was the place to be,” said Cathy Paul, who worked for the Pressmans in the early ’80s, when Barneys was a single store at 17th Street and Seventh Avenue. But in these uncertain days, disquiet reigns. “Sleepless nights,” said the associate who helped me slip on the $1,350 Japanese sport coat by Ring Jacket I tried on (not on sale). Another spoke of polishing up his résumé after years and years in one place. The likeliest outcome at week’s end was acquisition by Authentic Brands Group, which would close some or most of Barneys’ stores and license its IP to Saks Fifth Avenue, allowing the Barneys name and brand to live on in some form in Saks stores. Neil Kraft, who oversaw Barneys’ in-house advertising agency in the 1980s, was not terribly sanguine about what will come next. “People are trying to save a dream that was amazing at one point,” he said, “but that’s not valid anymore.”