OH MA: - yeah:
"Charles Baudelaire, 'Never a desire shall be formed by you that I will not aid you to realize; you will reign over your vulgar equals; money and gold and diamonds, fairy palaces, shall come to seek you and shall ask you to accept them without your having made the least effort to obtain them; you can change your abode as often as you like; you shall have in your power all sensualities without lassitude, in lands where the climate is always hot and where the women are as scented as the flowers.' He complained in no way of the evil reputation under which he lived, indeed, all over the world, and he assured me that he himself was of all living beings the most interested in the destruction of Superstition, and he avowed to me that he had been afraid, relatively as to his proper power, once only, and that was on the day when he had heard a preacher, more subtle than the rest of the human herd, cry in his pulpit: 'My dear brethren, do not ever forget, when you hear the progress of lights praised, that the loveliest trick of the Devil is to persuade you that he does not exist!' With this he rose and said good-by to me with a charming smile.”
Yeah - oh man...
27
You know you are becoming an irrelevant old blow hard when you start pining for the good old days. They were only good because you were in your prime.
65
Barney's decline breaks my heart. My late father was a life-long Barney's devotee, beginning when he was a young guy and "Old Man Barney" was hawking his wares downtown with his wife. I was introduced to Barney's at 7th Av. & 17th St. at a young age, when they began carrying clothes for women. The uptown store always felt like it could be anywhere-Dubai, Hong Kong, etc...beautiful but bland. I was able to buy things on sale and always, make-up. It saddens me that the grand stores of my NYC childhood are dead or dying. Though I shop for some things online, I still love brick and mortar browsing...it's the whole experience. I love Instagram, but its' produced a nation of dopey lemmings who have no individual ideas or taste...RIP, Barney's. Even if you manage to carry on, you've become a graveyard on Madison.
39
@Patou Many department store chains I favored have gone out of business after being purchased by hedge fund managers who ruined them. They weren't fancy or trendy but they're gone just like Bergdorf's. Everything changes. Nothing lasts.
30
@Lifelong New Yorker-Bergdorf's is still alive and well and in no danger-don't know what you're talking about! I was there last week. I live a few blocks away. And -nope, it's not hedge funders. You need to read up on this. Foreign companies. Insane rent hikes (Lord and Taylor's). Amazon and other on line purveyors. That's the reality.
44
Hey that’s me in the second photo in the article! Broadway and Prince does make one quite grumpy.
47
Both D&D and Barney’s have gouged people for years. It’s about time people caught on and these places went under.
37
Fashion and taste changes killed neither Barneys nor D&D. Instead it was debt. Plain and simple. These companies took on debt, sold their property and now have neither money nor a home. D&D was purposefully thrust into debt by its owner who saw more money in licensing than groceries. Barneys made some severe fashion miscalculations, took on debt, sold its property and nothing can reverse that death spiral. But I suppose that's not a sexy story for most people.
70
I made my touristic stop at Barneys. As an eclectic fashionista from a flyover state I was eager to experience this temple of style. I was crushed. First to greet me were some bright leather tote bags that said “Buy Me”. I checked the tag: 3K. No way am I dumb enough to spend my money for that. (I can afford it). The rest of the floors were a total disappointment. Rack after rack of outrageously priced black clothes with construction and fabrics no better than Walmart. No wonder Barneys et al are having a funeral.
48
Few companies survive beyond 90-100 years without totally re-inventing themselves. It seems as if what made companies successful in the past becomes part of the company culture and DNA and in the end inhibits new bold thinking about the brand and customer. Barneys, like JCPenney and many others in the retail landscape, couldn't get beyond their corporate DNA to rediscover itself and its customers.
17
Our much-missed Bill Cunningham said something like money's the cheapest thing; it's freedom that is expensive. Barneys and D&D symbolized freedom - from the everyday. Now so much is about chasing (following) something which is costly, but essentially very cheap.
72
@Lucie Andre
Lovely sentiment! I decided a long time ago not to enter the corporate salt mine. It's been freedom. But it's been hardship, too. And yet, I have my health and sanity. Others I know who toiled at what they did not like are not so lucky.
At D&D I was free to pick whatever I wanted under a certain amount. But I felt rich there in line pay alongside the rich.
But now that I'm a bit older, I notice that people who don't have to worry about money don't seem to have to...worry!
16
Me too. I used to work next door to D/D as a young (broke) fundraiser and a hot cocoa was a very big treat and a sandwich was a fun celebration. After 11 fabulous years I left the city for atlanta and now misunderstood baltimore. Don’t kid yourself-everyone everywhere worries about something. Happily it sounds like you are one of the luckier ones. I miss Bill don’t you?
29
Miss Bill C too
28
I’m not certain Barney’s was much different back in the 90’s. I wrote a book about that era of shopping in NY in the 90’s in the era of “shop til you drop” and describe my dismay with the excesses I perceived even back then. Perhaps it’s all reached a tipping point and that’s not a bad thing.
21
This whole part of Broadway is changing fast, but is not that the real nature of capitalism the US way? We should not have any nostalgia for that ugly way of thinking that type of society.
1
I remember once buying a little woollen grey hat at Barney's downtown. I was feeling kind of low that day. "Well, now you bought yourself a cute little hat," said the young man at the cashier's desk, as if sensing my rather down mood. He was very kind. I loved walking through and browsing in Barney's, even though I couldn't really afford too much.
40
I met a woman in the 90’s who was a vintage silver jewelry dealer. Barney’s stopped paying their invoices and she went bankrupt. Why oh why do the heirs get to mess up at our expense over and over again? I boycotted Barney’s from the day I met her. Why can’t those spoiled incompetent trust-funders pay their bills like the rest of use?
55
They feel that much wealthier playing around with other people's money.
21
Barney’s might have been iconic—unless you happened to be black.
Great article in WSJ many years ago about a young African American reporter and how he was treated in Barney’s.
Might have been the reason many of us never bothered to stop by.
53
In the early 1980's, I was cooking for and running the Tavola Calda, (aka take-out department) kitchen in Balducci's when Barneys, (which I first remember as Barneys Boy Town before it ever has such ultimately lofty aspirations...the radio ads used to encourage families to take their sons there for their first suit), and then Dean & De Luca appeared on the scene. Even with my employee's discount, I couldn't afford to buy anything at Balducci's or any of those kind of elevated environment emporiums. I was a single mother of a school age daughter, living on W. 21 St between 7th and 8th Aves, in a tidy 3 bedroom apartment. Life was good and finances were manageable, thanks to a food coop and careful spending. I passed Barneys every day, 15th St and 7th Ave, walking downtown to work in the Village, to Balducci's...never ever considering even entering Barneys, as I knew what prices were like inside. I had heard.
So, all three are almost gone now....along with that heady era of excess, in many quarters. My daughter is now mother of my two sensational grandaughters...we are all doing well.
59
@susan paul-the original Barney's wasn't on 15th St. It was on 17th Street. Even the ads touted it as being on "7th Ave. and 17th Street. Just sayin'.
11
I had lived at 7th Ave, 16th street in Manhattan from 1990 to 2013.
I loved Barney’s warehouse sale. I loved eat in corner in Soho’s D&D.
I loved to shop at Balducci’s.
I loved those stores very much and experiences and happy times I had there is definitely my New York State of Mind.
P.S. We have Barney’s and D&D in Japan. Every time I go there, I have mixed feeling, though.
24
Oh dear, oh dear. Stop the presses! New York is changing. Why, there are even people saying that it’s not as interesting or unique as it used to be and that’s it’s expensive and that’s why they moved to...wherever.
As a native New Yorker, who has lived here my entire 66 years and would never leave (where would one go?) I can tell you I have heard all of this before and I am sure I will hear it again and again. My father wailed about the thirties and many here do about the seventies. New York is ever changing.
53
@JMartin Well said. And if it ever stops changing, it will die.
16
Thank you, for bringing back my youth in New York, waiting tables, going to drama school, getting a play, waiting tables, living beside the decidedly unfashionable Gowan’s canal, getting a play, waiting tables and snatching luxuries and shiny things and rare bits of treasure, from the beautiful environments full of everything new and exceptional, strange and bohemian- not for everyone and now gone forever.
30
Aren't these stores actually being replaced by other bricks and mortar stores? Small boutiques or "curated" spaces where you can find unique items and brands not available elsewhere? I think you can blame big fashion as much as Barneys - they expanded everywhere at the same time -- if you can find Dior elsewhere, why go to Barneys? No more exclusivity on the brand side of things either.
Dean and Deluca were beaten by their own game, it as bound to happen.
14
One may not care for Amazon, but when I need guitar strings, I can order them from Amazon and get them in a day or two. No need to drive 15 miles to a music store anymore (our local store closed recently). Same can be said about lots of pedestrian objects, for which there is nothing illuminating about shopping for them.
On the other hand, one must go to an antique store for those things, and it is fun to shop there.
31
I think the writer misses the point. The reason these places are collapsing is that they abandoned their original idea in order to cash in on going national, or international. It’s so common, it’s banal. The ones that last are the ones that remain true to their concept and nature. Don’t feel sorry for them, they made out like bandits, until they didn’t anymore. As for the unknown artists, they’re still around, just not where you’re looking for them cuz a) they’re not your generation; b) they’re living in places you don’t frequent; and c) you’re looking for famous people now, but they won’t be famous for another 20 years.
66
I take issue with the binary notion of “it’s D&D and Barneys or it’s Amazon”—some of us who appreciated these now dying retailers in their heyday have moved on to small local providers: neighborhood coffee roasters, farmers market vendors, the local fishmonger, storefront couture designers, and small-batch beauty brands. All of these options define today’s NYC (OK, Brooklyn). I value the direct connections with creators and purveyors who are justifiably proud of the care they put into their wares. I don’t miss the old days.
33
The deep inner meaning of shopping? Get real. Please, just try to get real.
I lived in Manhattan in the late 60s and early 70s. What you now bemoan as ‘genericism’ (is that even a word?) I call ‘a city that no longer looks like Dresden after the bombings, and where you aren’t scared stiff to go out walking alone, and with good reason.’
If that’s ‘generic,’ by all means, please just gimme generic.
37
Oh shoot, where are the chic, hip, posturing, and posing high-end consumerists going to spend that wad of grands now? Maybe they can each buy a whole section of goods at a WalMart and then conspicuously donate all to the 'needy', making sure to draw appropriate attention to their virtue on Twitter, instagram, WhatsApp, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Face...., ....
35
Yes: The cost of living in New York City has truly become untenable. The desperation is that the heart and soul of this city are the arts; and the the artistic visions are continually encroached upon by shipped cardboard boxes. Conglomerates have ruined community based businesses, and made it impossible for boutiques, and mom-and-pop establishments to flourish. In turn this has created an insular subculture that cannot think outside the box or their cellular phones. Hopefully more independent minded souls will come forward to champion a rebirth of the "New York State Of Mind". Let's start with Landmark Preservation: it took so many years for a brass plaque to denote where the Fillmore East once was.
30
@Ronald Bomser
Who said the heart and soul of NYC are the arts? The heart and soul of NYC is ambition. People move here to become rich and famous. Some try it through art. Some through music and theater. Some through finance and commerce. Some to model.
Every city has art (Boston, Seattle, Asheville, Austin, Atlanta). What makes NYC and LA unusual is that one came become famous here.
People talk as is the Lower East Side is NYC. The Upper East Side is just as much NYC. It takes a special kind of myopia to be blind to the impact that Wall St has on the culture of NYC. You ca find starving artists anywhere, but if you want to find people who've made it, you have to come to NYC. What sets NYC apart is that almost everybody here has made it, in some way.
25
@Anti-Marx-Please. Stop smoking that wacky-tabacky. #quitramblingaboutnonsense
9
@Patou
I don't smoke or drink. I trade stocks, ski, and work out at Equinox. My income is over 250k.
5
With regards to Barneys, first off, any comments regarding their supposedly out-of-touch prices are irrelevant. It's a personal choice, whether one wants to spend $500 for a well-made dress, a blouse and slacks which could last you for years, versus spending that same $500 on a bunch of 'trendy', poor quality clothing items which will fall apart or no longer be 'in fashion', within one year. In other words, money itself, or a lack thereof, is not the issue. Many people simply choose to spend their (same) money differently.
For me, the biggest turnoff at Barneys on Madison Ave. was the apathetic customer service. There were some good salespeople here and there, but for the bulk of them, unless you were a celebrity or a frequent customer whom everyone knew to be loaded, then most sales reps basically ignored you, and made no effort to provide 'service'. But yet, whenever I was ready to have my expensive items rung-up, one of these same apathetic reps would be only 'too happy' to ring me up, likely getting a 'commission' for that mere act.
If I'm going to drop a good amount of money at such a shop, I expect 'service'. Most of the sales reps I encountered however, had a sense of entitlement similar to your average MTA and Post Office employees, doing the bare minimum, and then expecting all the perks to keep coming their way.
50
@Lisa Unfair to the MTA and Post Office.
35
I remember the Village Voice. Its demise is and was more catastrophic than D&D or Barney's, though all three are/will be missed.
75
New York was a different city when I opened Gramercy Natural on 2nd Av & 23rd St. In 1970 rents were affordable. I would wander into the village and marvel at Dean and DeLuca. Although my store was only 500 sq. ft, we made a modest living. In the end after almost 30 years I closed the shop, auctioned off stock and fixtures and now live in senior affordable housing in Mass. As a Teenager working in midtown, I bought wonderful English tailored suits from the original Barney's on Seventh Avenue and 17th Street and was the best dressed office boy in the company. Now two more institutions will be reduced to vacant spaces in the Amazonization of the retail business. It's a cruel world and retailing today for the masses has been reduce to schmattas and Walmart. New York in the 1970's was filthy, subways and buses were covered with graffiti. We were held up and shoplifted more times than I can count. City life now has devolved into families holding on desperately to rent stabilized apartments while the super wealthy buy luxury condos that are often not lived in as the city becomes sclerotic.
I still love the idea of New York even if just about everything has become unaffordable. I've done a Google Street view of my former store and the space has been vacant more often than it has been rented since I left it 20 years ago.
73
@Guitarman
The New York we remember is gone and won't return until after we are gone. It breaks all of our hearts who remember the 50's-90's. I'm as sorry as you. It's a young persons' city now.
29
@Guitarman The developers and realtors, along with the politicians who've enabled them, have really killed this city. I don't know if I've ever seen so many empty storefronts throughout all five boroughs. It's positively revolting, as at the core of this is pure greed.
54
@Guitarman. Yes. The health food store that opened as a small store on a side street in Park Slope in the early 70s and expanded to 3 storefronts on 7th Avenue has been closed now for more than a year. The stores remain empty. A familiar story. I miss the NYC where I grew up in the 50s, 60s and 70s.
25
I walked into Barney’s once looking for a small cosmetic bag for my lipsticks. I wasn’t willing to spend $500 on one and I love how the down-to-earth salesgirl told me I could get a cosmetic bag in Korea town for a dollar.
I visited D + D for the first time 20 years ago when I first moved to New York for school. I still remember the miniature candied apples. I think with inflation, one would go for about $14 these days. It was a beautiful experience to just walk in and look around.
23
I miss the prune danish. Can find it anywhere
6
In fall '66 I took the train in from the CT suburbs to go to the original Barneys at 7th Ave. and 17th Street. I was a young teen and somehow (maybe Cousin Brucie?) the word had gotten out that they had the most fab mod ties and wide wale cords. The place was a dump, the cool stuff for guys was in the basement, but it did have racks of paisley shirts and Carnaby Street caps next to the Bar Mitzvah suits. That Barneys died a long time ago, and now a later incarnation is dying. It's hard to imagine a better Barneys will emerge from the ashes this time, but we can hope. It's happened before.
9
Boring, iper-expensive and outdated. In the time of Trader's Joes, Dean & Deluca is just an old concept for few rich customers with no imagination.
I was at Barneys downtown today. So sad. No energy, basic display of ultra expensive handbags and shoes, extremely boring.
They deserve to go.
14
@salvatore denuccio-Uh, unless you astral projected back to 1993, you couldn't have been at Barney's "downtown" recently. It closed then. The only Barney's in NYC is uptown, on Madison and 61st St. In NYC, 61st is considered uptown, unless you're up in Harlem. And still, no one refers to 61st and Madison as "downtown".
2
Barney’s must go! Blaming Amazon (or market capitalism) for the failure of businesses they offered no value to their customers is not nostalgic, it’s ludicrous. It’s also ironic because if there is any place that should celebrate the liquidation of failed businesses, it must be NYC.
8
Anyone who seriously thinks "shopping [is] an act of self-actualization" is pathetic. Only a true dullard could conflate buying their groceries at some overpriced store with having an innate artistic sensibility. And to the Gen X-ers opining the loss of their favorite status symbol shops, just know that parting with your money there never made you cool, just a sucker for branding.
28
@Allison read some of the comments. It was much more than that to many people.
10
Snob appeal ain't what it used to be.
22
People don't know the true story that set Barneys on this path. The company paid cash for the Madison Avenue building in 1990. They had a reciprocal investment agreement with Isetan, a 100+ year-old Japanese family owned retailer, similar to Barneys. It was a 60/40 and 40/60 agreement with both companies taking a minority stake in the other. After Isetan was the subject of a hostile takeover by Mitsubishi Bank in the 90's, they had a team of Ace lawyers file an international lawsuit claiming that the agreement was not a stock swap, but a purchase of the real estate. It definitely was not. Mitsubishi had better lawyers, and Barneys lost in a reinterpretation of a bilingual contract. They then had to pay $1 million a month in rent for the building they paid several hundred million dollars for in cash. That number is now several times higher. It unsustainable. Mitsubishi Bank's evil plan is the underlying reason Barneys has never recovered financially.
43
@XYZ-No, it was Gene Pressman's greed and ego that did them in. Read the book.
6
I worked there throughout the 90’s as an executive and know all of this as fact.
18
The bankruptcies of D & D and Barneys do not signify anything special. Founders sold their firms at high prices. The firms were resold at higher prices with much debt attached. When a firm has heavy debt and pays high rents, it's hard to stay in business. Makes no difference what the business is.
26
Barneys spent generations at “7th Ave. and Seventeenth Street” before it decided that its flagship would move to the most expensive expanse of Madison Ave. I wonder how many Times readers remember the original, exceptional Barneys? My Bar Mitzvah suit came from Barneys, at discount. Suffice it to say that it was two mayors before Dean and DeLuca opened.
Barney’s, originally a discount clothier, fell victim to its own unquenchable ambition.
But I feel a closer kinship to Dean and DeLuca. As a Hotel and Culinary student in the early 80s, I fell in with the old, crusty steward of the Culinary, Baking and Pastry classes of my school in Downtown Brooklyn, way before THAT area gentrified. Old man Dan Alden tasked me with scouring stores across the city for obscure ingredients he couldn’t order from wholesalers. That included, but wasn’t limited to, angelica for candying, and the fine herb chervil (google it, kids). I walked into Dean and DeLuca, vainly looking for these or other scavenger hunt prizes, and was smitten. I think I left with cookies. The chervil eventually surfaced at Jefferson Market, on Sixth Ave., and the angelica across the avenue at Balducci’s. Balducci’s went into the wholesale produce business, successfully enough to shutter their retail store, a far more representative slice of Italy than Eataly will ever be. Jefferson Market, too, is long gone.
This exercise made me a better chef, and an ardent foodie. My wife and I ate at the SoHo Chanterelle, too.
36
What I think I remember about Barney's is from childhood, listening to 1010 WINS when it played Top 40, and the annoying, loud, incessant commercials for Barney's at 7th Avenue and 17th Street.
Then it had a makeover and became important, in the fashion sense of the word.
11
@DesertFlowerLV
“Calling all cars for Barney’s!”
1
Times have changed. Trader Joes's has become the Dean & DeLuca for everyone at much more affordable prices. You can shop for your arugula, brie, brioche and wine and so much more at affordable prices. And chances are you can do it at 10 PM in your pajamas and flip flops. Chances are you will run into your neighbor or your doctor as I did recently and they might be wearing pajamas.
26
@maya But that's really the point. Trader Joe's is fine. I shop there myself. It's just not special. Every city has one, and NY is becoming just like every other city. It used to be a magical place, full of interesting people and places to discover.
33
@maya
The thought, while shopping, of running into anyone in their pajamas, whether one's neighbor or doctor, is truly terrifying.
19
@Mary It's not just NY. The entire world is becoming similar.
15
In the late 70's and early 80's Barneys was incredibly supportive of unknown young innovative designers.
I was only 23 and was able to show the menswear buyer a small collection of winter scarves I designed and wove. He treated me like a "real" designer... was totally respectful and brought my collection into the store for two seasons.
Several of my designer friends who were also just starting out had their work featured in their store windows and full page ads in the fashion magazines.
This was just a few years in the store's history, but it help a lot of us.
55
@S.R. Bendel's was the same way w/ young designers. A friend of mine literally made coats on the floor of her apartment. One day someone chased her down the street to ask her where she got her coat. It was a Bendel's buyer. They bought a small batch and launched her career.
15
@bubblin' crude
yup... my pals who were in Barneys windows were also in Bendel's as well :)
4
Dean & DeLuca may have have opened "to serve a nascent colony of painters and sculptors (and the artistic hopeful)" but not too long after that it was a store that offered, at very high price points, luxury food items that were difficult to find elsewhere and curated versions of more common items (e.g., the most perfect looking salad ingredients in the City), again at very high price points.
As time passed Dean & DeLuca encountered increasing competition (some at less stratospheric price points) -- it was no longer necessary to go to Prince Street to find dozens of types of olive oil -- and pursued an expansion strategy that failed and with the benefit of hindsight was probably ill-conceived. Those are the factors that led to its current state.
8
Oh, how I miss Balducci's, another of the purveyors of fine foods in the City in the 70s. And then there was the time that Wallace Shawn was in front of me at the Appetizing counter, ordering smoked salmon. Ah, yes, I remember it well.
26
And there are those who love the new, small, funky, and adventurous. They too will come and go but what fun to be a part of the experiment. I did love D&D for the spices not routinely available in the 70’s. A small grocer on the upper east side was my ideal for presentation and quality!
4
@Barbara I held onto my D&D spice tins for 20 years! I just recently tossed them.
A strange similarity of our times with those of Marie Antoinette is the production of gauzy cotton clothing for fancy prices. She and her ladies adopted the dress worn by ladies in the Caribbean.
This put a dent in the French silk industry. The gauzy cottons mostly came from Germany and Austria.
Now I see fancy prices for 2 seams on a piece of gauze. The more things change.....
10
What a great article. Oh the memories at both locations and I’m only 41!
16
I'm a working class kid from the suburbs, and my experience of the staff at Barneys - even when I was clearly a poor college kid just gawking at clothes I couldn't afford - was always one of professionalism and courtesy. I WANTED attitude - I mean it's New York for crying out loud! - but instead I got a level of service that New Yorkers are rarely given credit for, but, frankly, exemplify.
24
Thanks for the memories, Ginia. I lived in Soho before it was even Soho. Walked a couple of blocks to D&D for the makings of a special late Sunday breakfast from when they first opened. Eventually got priced out and am stuck in the 'burbs now. But I console myself with the fact that the City I knew and loved is not there anymore.
25
@Dolores Kazanjian
Consider this: You have changed more than the city. You were YOUNG then and everything was fresh and new. Similar experiences are still there for the new generation!
6
@DR This is an interesting point and difficult to sort out. Has NY really changed, or was I just viewing it through the magical lens of youth? I do think NY would have seemed much less magical if I had arrived to find mostly 7-11, Taco Bell, IHOP and all of the same stores as my hometown mall.
16
@DR I'm sure that many of us prize our memories of NYC because they reflect our youth; it's also true though that the city has changed a great deal and generally speaking not for the better.
I grew up in 70s days New York which was yes much more dangerous and much dirtier but I will say that our neighborhoods were much more distinctive and it was very rare to see a chain store (with the exception of supermarkets).
And the cost of living here has increased exponentially. My parents made middle-class salaries and we grew up in Manhattan. That's flat-out impossible now.
28
I remember when Nordstrom's came to Orlando and people howled out loud with laughter at the prices. I wonder what became of it.
4
@Liz I just moved from Orlando and Nordstrom is still at the Mall of Millenia, along with Saks.
1
About ten years ago I was driving through Napa Valley and saw a Dean and Deluca. I stopped in because I'd heard about the place as a swank New York food store, but when I went in, I found nothing that hadn't been available for years in stores like the Berkeley Bowl or the food ghetto of North Berkeley. My thoughts at the time were, "Oh, they're catering to snobbish New Yorkers and other people from outside the area who don't know what is already available in this region, and who will pay exhorbitant prices because of the name and the fact that they are on vacation in "Napa". Silly New Yorkers!"
The reality is that the consumer is pretty smart, and with all the information available on the internet today, and the general interest in food and fashion, people now can find something new or good without the insurance policy of a brand name. In fact, brand names like Nordstrom, Barneys and Dean and Deluca have become symbolic of an older, foolishly consumerist era, the Reagan years, and Trump, with all his gilded buildings, is the ultimate symbol of that hype.
16
@Rod Stevens The reality is that the Napa store opened because the then owner of Dean & DeLuca lived there.
10
@Rod Stevens When D&D opened in SoHo, though, it wasn't a brand or a pre-fabbed, manipulated corporate environment. It came about organically to give the artists and other denizens of the neighborhood what they couldn't get before without traveling.
When new places open now, they feel formulaic. You google them to find that they are chains from other cities, applying a proven marketing formula, known to generate profit in other similar locations. This is great for business and profits, but it's not interesting or special. By the time D&D expanded all the way to Nor Cal, it probably was such a place, and trying to market its tested brand in a region that already had what it offered.
10
I don't quite understand the feeling of nostalgia for D&D. I suppose I wasn't aware of its rich history, however I was always repelled by the colonial fantasy of brown and black sinned people in white gloves serving mostly white clientele. Shopped at Gourmet Garage instead.
11
I think one finds that in pretty much every gourmet food store.
3
It used to be fun to shop at Barneys but it turned into a silly over-priced over-done place... kinda like some of the people who shop there now...
15
Meanwhile in Bangkok, there are Dean & Delucas popping up on every commercial avenue. They’re not grocery stores anymore. They’re cafes competing with Starbucks.
9
@Tony
there was a D&D cafe and sandwich shop on University Pl near NYU. I got discovered for some modeling work at that location. So, I remember it fondly.
4
I remember looking at men’s shoes at Barney’s during a lunch break many years ago, when I worked at an architectural firm close by. I quickly picked up a pair of handsome looking leather loafers and read the price tag on the bottom : $125. I put them back down and then thought, that’s not a bad price at all - those a nice looking shoes, I could buy those. I picked them back up, looked at the price again, put them back down. Yes, I saw that right, wow that’s not so bad. But.. I picked the shoes back up, looked at the price again, put them back down. What? Picked them back up, put them back down 2 or 3 more times. I noticed a security guard looking my way. “I have never seen shoes that cost $1250 before,” I said to him with a bewildered smile. “You obviously don’t shop at Barney’s,” he quipped.
22
@Lionel M.
I bought a pair of 1200 Prada runway shoes in 2015. They were absolutely beautiful. They had a huge chunk sole (2 inches) and a layer of wood between shoe and sole. Spectacular shoes. I sold them on eBay, because I'm 5' 7" and felt silly wearing shoes that gave me almost 3 more inches of height. They looked almost like platform shoes (but much more beautifully crafted). I'd like to say that 1200 dollar shoes signal the decline of civiliztion, but those shoes (Prada Runway collection) were the bomb (the cat's meow, if you're over 50). The soles were like glue on ice. Best traction I've ever had on NYC ice.
7
I lived in Queen and Brooklyn for most of my life, and worked in soho for at least a decade, but pretty much grew up in downtown NYC. Shopped for records at saint marks, Tower records and bleeker bobs, met Helena Christiensen, Lenny Kravitz and Liv Tyler on line to the check out in Dean and Deluca and Sting in at the Strand. I discovered Ross Myers and Kieslowski at the Film Forum and Angelica. Sat next to Will Farel and his dad on Fathers Day at the spoted pig and Micky Rourke and his girlfriend on Bleecker Street, bought my wading suit on sale at Barnies. Hung out with the guys from Slayer backstage in Brooklyn and the beastie boys in a bar on lower east side, and had one of the best bagels (many times) at Russ and Daughters. Sometime around 2012 I started to notice more and more racist comments coming from strangers. Standing on line and someone in the back of me saying how turban waring foreigners smell, or that someone would never go to Harlem because they are going to be robbed. It took a year of these resentments to finally make me realize that NYC of my childhood and young adulthood - the NYC where you could hang out with wall street guys, tranies, gogo boys and tourists was going away, and was being taken over by harden mentalities that did not want to expend what little they knew, but wanted to enforce their believes. I decided to move away. I miss NYC. But I know that the city is always changing - maybe I'll comeback when it becomes less popular and sane.
41
And in all that time you didn’t learn to spell “Bleecker” correctly?
10
@Robert Lee It is not racist to avoid the parts of the City with the highest crime rates because of a concern about crime. It's a data driven decision.
7
@Joel Actually, such comments/beliefs usually are based in racism. Just because 'most crime' may have occurred in Harlem at a point in time, isn't the same as saying that 'most people who go to Harlem will be the victim of a crime'.
Do people avoid going to Mexico because so many of them are supposedly 'rapists'?
Do you avoid meeting with bankers or mortgage lenders who are white, since most white-collar criminals are white?
12
Dear Ginia,
What has happened is that you have aged (which is perfectly fine) and that the world has changed. I'm pretty sure that young people still have many fulfilling social experiences, that they are still capable of using their imagination and that they can hack it in the big city. Just not at Barneys.
Sympathetically yours,
Middle-aged but hopeful (not my Tinder name)
10
People just do not have the disposable income they once had. Even the bare essentials are expensive now. Everyone is cutting corners now, as in high-end stores.
35
My crocodile tears are profuse. Fancy, overpriced delicatessens and haberdashers are untenable businesses.
10
My visit to Barney's - $1,000 plastic tote bags. Seriously? That place can't die soon enough.
30
In the 70s, in New York, The Front Porch was a small (30 seat- limited menu) gourmet restaurant on W 11th street which specialized in interesting homemade soups and breads- creative food, well priced-a great place for lunch. They were busy- standing room only. The owners were advised to expand; they took out multiple bank loans and opened at 3 more locations. Within three years, they went under.
.
The owners blamed inflation. The cost of ingredients went up. And they felt there was a limit what you could charge for a bowl of soup. But the ill advised expansion and the resulting debt was surely a cause as well.
21
I remember The Front Porch! I always wondered what happened to it.
3
@paul gottlieb
OMG! The Front Porch! I haven't thought of that place in ages. I remember it fondly along with several romantic dates I had there.
5
Thank you for this beautifully written story expressing so well the point of Barneys in its heyday. I remember visiting the original store in Chelsea in the ‘80s for the first time and feeling astonished and elated that such a store existed — the co-op section with its understated, creative, beautifully made, practical (and affordable!) clothes implying a community of like-minded people and a world in which to wear such clothes. Unfortunately all those artisans were gone the first time Barneys had troubles and didn’t pay its vendors. The uptown store became more like all the other stores, and when the next owners fired Julie Gilhart and went broad and deep in animal print blouses a la Real Housewives in 2011, I never went back. Sadly, Steven Alan is also having troubles, probably not unrelated to diminished middle class spending power. If you are wondering what has hallowed out the culture of New York and once-healthy businesses everywhere, I would suggest looking at rent decontrol and private equity.
32
I have made several trips to New York City over the past 30+ years for business, to see Broadway shows, to go sightseeing, browse world-class museums, eat real New York bagels, experience fine dining and to go shopping in Manhattan. New York’s a magical place so discovering Zabar’s, Fifth Avenue and places like Dean & DeLuca made each trip special.
Sure Dean & DeLuca was overpriced and snooty but I still could fit a treasured find into my North Carolina budget. There were items I could find nowhere else, certainly not in Raleigh or Charlotte. Did I need those items? Probably not but I enjoyed my expensive coffee, tea and chocolates; they brightened my otherwise frugal life.
I entered Barney’s on one trip but did not buy anything; it felt like a museum. It was too rich for my former country girl budget. Still I could dream…
Now we provincials in North Carolina can find most, if not all, of the fancy products via the Internet or perhaps in the Saks in Raleigh or Neiman Marcus in Charlotte. There’s even a Hermes shop in Charlotte – for scarf lovers like me.
But once something can be fairly easily found in Raleigh or Charlotte, it’s available to the masses and loses its cache.
40
It tell a lot about the values of the society when shopping is considered art.
17
@Michael. Actually, fashion can be art. And there is long history of fashion creatives hanging out with the fine arts crowd. Take Alexander McQueen, or the earlier example of Poiret.
8
@NR just to be clear, the commenter referred to society, not fashion, being considered an art or not.
Not mentioned in the article is Barney's history with racial profiling. Its easy to see why the internet has become such a dominant force in retail, especially in the luxury goods market, as the kind of discrimination that 'upscale' stores like Barney's historically got away with doesn't work online. The internet only cares about the color of your money.
28
@MH I "shopped" in Barney's just once and felt "in over my head". There was almost nothing I could afford and it was obvious to the clerks that I did not belong. And I am not a person of color. I am a "woman of a certain age" with money to spend but the smell of the rural farm where I grew up POOR clung to me even after decades of work to remove the grime and scent of poverty. I never had the same feeling of rejection at Saks Fifth Avenue. They'll let you smell as many perfumes as you wish...
27
@MH, uh, saw Serena Williams spending her money there about five years ago after which she walked out the door with a bevy of shopping bags to a waiting SUV. Racial profiling is not unique to Barneys, you can find it at Duane Reade.
And this issue has nothing to do with Barneys' bankruptcy.
5
@Peyton Collier-Kerr
I felt that way about Nordstrom, although that’s not a NY store. Never snooty, always welcoming and helpful. And I canNOT claim to be an impressive looking shopper! Jeans and sneakers, practical non-designer handbag...
7
I hope this doesn't sound preachy but sometimes it can't be helped: if you bemoan the city you've lost because you're so tied to your phone, put down your phone and experience it a different way. Leave your phone at home, or better yet, get a "dumb" phone. I'm only 42 and willingly have an old Nokia that doesn't even have internet access. Without that tether to the information maelstrom, I'm free to experience the place I live in the "old school" way, which really is thoroughly enjoyable.
I know some folks need their smart phones for work, but most of us don't. Think of the cities we'd have if more of us took out the ear buds, put down the phone, and actually existed in the same place together. This unfolding dystopia doesn't have to be inevitable. All it takes is some self-control.
56
Barney's changed. Back in the 1970's in their Seventh Avenue store where young professionals straight out of higher education stocked up on business suits (they had a slightly less expensive line of suits in one department) service was still coldly professional. Not warm but not either French department store "service", i.e. cold indifference nor Abercrombie style "we'll judge you"..
But along came their brief foray to a Long Island Gold Coast branch, and the flagship uptown. Attitude you could cut with a knife. We're doing you a favor by deigning to even deal with you, particularly if you looked outer borough or "bridge and tunnel" as the saying went then. No tears shed here. Good riddance.
23
“Barneys is controlled by the former hedge-fund manager”
Therein lies the problem. Being clever with the books is not the same as running a business.
A sound piece of advice: never hire a lawyer or banker to run your business.
34
No. It does not matter.
4
Sorry to be the contradicting person here, but this news is a very bad omen for New York. First it was the book stores, then New York establishments like Pearl Paints. And how many great restaurants had to close their doors? If Dean and Deluca and -- a real NY institution if ever there was one -- Barney's have to close doors, life in New York is spiraling downward. The Hudson Yard-type megadevelopers are running amuck with their glass and steel 'scrapers. To paraphrase Krushev, it's enough to make a pane of glass weep.
38
@David, Barneys and Dean and DeLuca are not run by their founders. And there is still enormous creativity in NYC. It's in the small shops.
7
@David
Two demises attributable to different reasons. For generations, Barneys was on the fringe of the Village at, as the radio ads went, “Seventh Avenue and Seventeenth Street,” and sold discounted suits. It somehow decided to ditch that plain neighborhood right off the subway for Madison Avenue and the most expensive retail space on earth.
Overpriced merchandise with haughty service (if you can call it that), lashed to overexpansion. Like a dinosaur, it was destined for extinction.
Dean and DeLuca was one of the first places where you could go to sort out a dozen different extra virgin olive oils by provenance. SoHo blew up, and the rent multiplied, at the same time that stores like Zabars and Fairway started filling D&Ds niche, at rational prices. Nearby Gourmet Garage exposed how eyewateringly expensive D&D actually was. The writing was on the wall when being a foodie went mainstream in NYC, now already a long time ago.
9
Brilliant piece. Time moves on.
9
If you distill the essence of the now sterile, lobotomized, glassified, eviscerated New York into a person, it would look remarkably like Michael Bloomberg.
20
@stan continople, whoa! So Brooklyn, parts of Queens and the Bronx, not to mention the Catskills and the Hudson Valley are sterile? The trend you are referencing is global, and blaming Bloomberg for it is a disgruntled reach.
3
@stan continople!
wow brilliant! This should be the Readers Pick. Short, pointed! Brilliant! Thank you!!
1
It's been said that the artists invest cultural capital only to be inevitably followed by financial capital. If we identify as artists, (or artistic grocers), we are part of the gentrification process, even if it is also true that we ultimately suffer the consequences of gentrification.
I enjoy both analysis and nostalgia, but let's not confuse the two.
2
As long as Paul Stuart is still on Madison Avenue and Gourmet Garage is still on Broome Street, providing a reasonably-priced lunch in SoHo, the sky has not fallen in my New York.
14
Even when Barney’s was on Seventh Ave and 17th Street, and was supposed to be a discount store, it was too rich for my family. In 1968, after a trip to Barney’s, we spend $40 at Gimbel’s for my Bar Mitzvah suit. Most of the time we shopped at Alexander’s. I don’t recall ever stepping into the Madison Avenue store and may have been in Dean & DeLuca once.
The great thing about New York is that folks in different economic strata, really different universes, coexisted in the same physical space, often times oblivious to the existence of the other.
The fact that there are no Gimbel’s or Alexander’s anymore is not the reason I finally left NYC, but collectively, it’s not the same place. However, I think the failure of these businesses was more due to over-expansion than anything else. I haven’t noticed a shortage of wealthy people in NYC who know how to spend money.
42
This is a GREAT piece and an important statement. And beautifully written. The kind of article you want to discuss with your friends while shopping. (Oops, sorry, no longer applicable.) Being constantly on our phones and social media has turned shopping into a mundane activity. There is nothing social about it. Guilty as charged, btw. Do mothers and daughters still shop together? (The only time mine and I never fought...) Barneys is closing just when I am starting to read Candace Bushnell’s last novel questioning the vibrancy (disappearance?) of...sex in our City! Two birds with one stone?
25
there are still plenty of small independent stores in the city selling everything from coffee to books to cheese to fancy light bulbs, you just have to look for them. I remember everyone bemoaning the loss of Pearl Paint, I walked into an art shop in Brooklyn recently, it was beautifully kept, well stocked and cheap.
Cities change, what doesn't is people trying to recapture their youth through overblown nostalgia.
8
@ ny‘er
I agree. The only thing turning for example Pearl Paint into condominiums is loosing history. History people still think is NY.
Even if it was / is new history the city should have never allowed the demolition of all those places. Keith Haring store, cbgbs, and the stairs of Pearl Paint. Imagine how many! world famous artists walked those stairs... Things like this should have been preserved for further generations!
Imagine if the French for example would have just thrown away everything historical that is now in the Louvre.. NY had the amazing chance to preserve, be proud of and show the world the real thing not just finished work of art in museums or the marketing of it..
Imagine you would be able to see a real graffiti subway car, where the real now famous artists started out their career...
NY it self! could be an art museum where everything else that now exists could easily coexist..
Not only endless stories written on paper of how it was..
Those stories will eventually be as dead as the people who lived them and NY will just be like any other modern city. No past. No history..
That saddens me the most. This careless habit.. But then we lost our cultural elite to Aids long ago and with the cleaning everything they ever made and lived. We could have had the real! thing.. Very sad!
1
I'm a native New Yorker, born in 1951. I moved to Westchester in 1953, worked in Manhattan starting in 1973 moved there in 1975 for law school and (hopefully) romance. It was a different time and a different place.
My parents took me to a pre-chic Barney's for my Bar Mitzvah suit and later, when I entered college, for a tweed three-piece suit and some other items. Between college (an a master's degree) and law school, Barney's went from off-price to chic, and I still remember going there for clothing my parents purchased for me i 1975 when the alterations were NOT properly done. I told them they could sell them to someone else and refund my parents, as all they did was shorten the pants. Embarrassing the staff proved effective, the alternations were done ("Give us another chance!") and I never purchased there again.
Ms. Bellafante is correct; New York lost its specialness with co-oping, the AIDS epidemic and gentrification in the 1970s and 1980s. It now resembles any high-end mall, with housing being commodified and used as a money laundry by buyers who often hide behind multiple corporations and have other residences. I go back to the West Village occasionally, and feel like the title of Schoenberg's "A Survivor from Warsaw" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Survivor_from_Warsaw). I go back and feel lucky to have been in Manhattan in the lively, creative, rough-around-the-edges 1970s, rather than the sanitized and homogenized place that replaced it.
51
@Carl Ian Schwartz, Ms. Bellafante assumes NYC is unique. It is, but the trend you speak of is international and its roots complex. Drilling it down to evil landlords and finance types is naive
3
@NR
Landlords are a big problem. Need proof? Check the retail space vacancy rate. There are empty storefronts as far as the eye can see. Landlords would rather keep a storefront vacant rather than lower the price and actually collect rent.
18
@Paul
.....But they don't loose money on vacant stores because of the way the tax laws work in their favor. They are able to write off the loss. The system is rigged in favor of the landlords.
11
Don't both Barney's and Dean & DeLuca illustrate the risk of careless expansion?
29
They actually illustrate the risk of careless debt brought on by non retail management and ownership. Sears and toys r us, same situation.
33
@karen
Debt and over-expansion may be related for Barney's and D&D. I don't think that applies to the other two.
I know that Toys 'R' Us was a victim of predatory capital, which bought the company via leveraged buyout (frequently a death blow) to extract money from it and let it die. Sears seems to be similar. I don't know much about Barney's and D&D, but D&D seems to fit your description better.
6
OK, I get nostalgia, but the comments here are debating the fine points of morel sourcing and purchasing, and lost neighborhood quirkiness, on the same day when other NYT articles are reporting on a UN study about looming food shortages for much of the world, and how drinkable water is disappearing. I know, I know - this is reportage on elite metro culture, not to be taken so seriously. But I can’t help starting to think that part of the problem is how easily we can get distracted by narcissistic consumer angst when the ship is going down.
62
@Lise I don’t think that’s part of the problem. The problem is capitalism is a great driver of invention and new technologies but it’s also a prodigious waster of resources and we’re all waiting and hoping for a breakthrough in alternative energy to save the day but the day when gas and coal are have a greater up front cost than wind and solar may not arrive in time to save us because even though the environmental cost of the former is in fact prohibitive at this point, bottom line is it’s cheaper up front and that’s what determines history right now, the cost and deployment of resources. Regaling each other with Barney’s stories is more interesting than what virtually every household in America does each night. Turn on the boob tube to soften up the grey matter.
7
@Lise You are quite right, there are more important issues facing us, our species, and the entire planet - at least the biosphere anyway. But don't begrudge us our nostalgia for a Manhatten that is no more.
Of course things change, they always do, but the city seems to have lost its soul in some ways, crushed by gleaming spires of expensive real estate no doubt.
5
Ms. Bellefante’s columns have for some time been striking the same unfortunate declinist tone. Rather than addressing the elitism that often underlies her ostensibly populist message, I’ll simply point out the fact that her message is incorrect.
Yes, SoHo is not the SoHo of 1977. How could it be? But has Ms. Bellefante journeyed to, say, Bushwick to see what’s going on there? The extraordinary electronic music scene, intriguing bars and restaurants...all the things that can’t be replaced by Amazon.
And okay, sure, SoHo factories became Chanel and Prada stores, but over in Sunset Park, the Industry City complex has revitalized the notion that a small goods-producing firm can’t make it in the city.
It feels to me like Ms. Bellefante is so busy stewing over the lost past that she isn’t taking time to explore the present. It’s a shame because there’s a lot going on, and a lot of extraordinary people who weren’t fortunate enough to shop at Dean and Deluca in 1997. Luckily, they aren’t letting that fact hold them back.
25
@Paul
It will only be a few years before the real estate strip miners destroy the fleeting ambiance of Bushwick. Its current blossoming depends on young people who can afford to live there; once they're gone, goodbye quirk, hello TD Bank!
23
@Paul
It’s all about gentrification fatigue. This same senario is being played out over and over everywhere. Cities that are dying, want artists to come and create a new Soho. Developers see this as a way to create the boring successful New York that it has become. It’s all about greed and money. I miss the New York that once was. I enjoy these articles as it brings back a lot of good memories. What I’m sick of is being a pawn for the money class. I won’t do it anymore.
18
...I love Barney’s and have shopped there for years but you could be bleeding out on the floor and still the sales clerks would not give you the time of day- unless perhaps you managed to capture their attention by getting blood on their Manolo’s. Barney’s could learn a thing or two from the fantastic staff at Bergdorf Goodman...
71
@DaisyMae
Yes they could, especially given their habit of trailing black customers in the store or calling the police when a black teenager buys a belt deemed “not fitting his socioeconomic profile”....
3
Good riddance to vastly over-priced and mediocre businesses. Neither rose to the level of art - it was exclusivity. “I can afford this $12 croissant and you cannot” type ish.
26
First they came for your bookstores and art-house movie theaters, then for your over-priced smoked salmon and $200 cargo pants. What's a boho new yorker to do?...how about moving and making some other place cool cause your current home town is becoming one big unlivable uncool shopping mall....that includes you too Brooklyn. I think it's the Bronx's turn finally...there are some awesome apartments waiting for conversion on the Grand Concourse, which is called Grand for a reason.
41
@Jemenfou: its' full name is the Grand Boulevard and Concourse...I lived a few blocks from it when I was in high school..
3
It used to be said New Yorkers try to make their lives interesting, while Californians try to make their lives convenient. Times have changed.
13
D&D and Barney’s peddled the desire for luxury and all that desire made luxury ubiquitous and tawdry. It was never luxury it was always peddling the notion of exclusivity. No surprise NYC is the soulless wreck it currently is
22
I read through this confusing story twice, and I still don't know which store sells what. Is Barney's a grocer or a clothier?
Sometimes the NYT writers are so obsessed with their own swell lives in the big city that they forget that they have many readers who live elsewhere. A little background information, amidst all the inside baseball, can be helpful.
17
@Bob
Barney's is an overpriced department store.
Dean and Deluca is a small grocer/eatery that is past its prime.
5
@Raj, Saks, Bergdorf, Neiman's, and Barneys' Mad Ave neighbors charge the same high prices. No one demands that you shop there.
1
Overpriced and selling snob appeal. Good riddance to both of them.
18
Ms. Bellafante,
I think you're forgetting that a lot of gourmet food stores and clothing retailers also began to mimic some aspects of Dean & DeLuca and Barneys.
That and the expansion of the online luxury retailers took away the "these are the only places that you can buy xy cheese or the spring collection from that hot new designer."
The wealthy class is is still spending a lot on food and fashion. They just have a lot places in which to make their purchases.
And you're also forgetting the personalities that drove Dean & DeLuca and Barneys. Literally, Dean and DeLuca, and, with Barneys, the Pressman family.
Dean and DeLuca's failings match what happened when other family-run gourmet empires expanded to include non-family members. How do you explain Zabar's or better yet, Eli's, a separate company from a family member that charges insanely high prices.
I would say the seeds of Barney's demise came with third-generation Gene's profligate spending on the new Madison Avenue flagship. The store was still cool, but it lost its edge by over-expanding, the way Charivari did in the 1990s.
12
Barney's and Dean & Deluca are symptomatic of something bigger - our society is driven by consumption and for decades we have been told that our well-being as consumers overrides our interests as workers, as our industry was hollowed out and sent overseas. We have been turned into a nation of shopkeepers, selling imported stuff to each other. And yes, tech is all about consumption; Google would not survive without ad revenue.
For high-end retail to collapse, it shows that our ability to consume is reaching its limits, constrained by the lack of good jobs, wealth inequality and high debt. These are not businesses subject to Main Street retail malaise. They are the inevitable result of the economic model our leaders have pursued - if we don't produce stuff that other countries will buy, we can only buy stuff as long as someone is willing to lend to us.
60
@RAD61In about 150 words or so, you've told the story of America today. Sad truth.
26
Barney's and Dean & Deluca are symptomatic of something bigger - our society is driven by consumption and for decades we have been told that our well-being as consumers overrides our interests as workers, as our industry was hollowed out and sent overseas. We have been turned into a nation of shopkeepers, selling imported stuff to each other. And yes, tech is all about consumption; Google would not survive without ad revenue.
For high-end retail to collapse, it shows that our ability to consume is reaching its limits, constrained by the lack of good jobs, wealth inequality and high debt. These are not businesses subject to Main Street retail malaise. They are the inevitable result of the economic model our leaders have pursued - if we don't produce stuff that other countries will buy, we can only buy stuff as long as someone is willing to lend to us.
4
@RAD61, go back to 17th century Holland and you will find the same bourgeois aspirations.
In the old days, businesses expanded from accumulated earnings/free cash flow.
Not anymore. Expansion is done by loading up the balance sheet with expensive, long term debt.
In the old days, that was considered dim witted, short sighted.
Perhaps it's time to revisit an aversion to debt.
50
Ginia, what a beautifully written piece. Thank you.
10
For the sake of correctness, most NYC contemporary artists can be seen at Whole Foods.
7
@Ryan Spending their whole paycheck.
4
Both D&D and Barney's were known for their exorbitant prices. In addition, Barney's was known for its incredibly condescending sales people. I, for one, never bought anything at either establishment, and will not shed a tear over their demise.
25
Not to mention Barney’s being caught racial profiling.
9
Or maybe you are just older now than you were in the 1970s...
2
I am not sad. I never could afford to shop/eat at either. Good riddance.
17
I worked at that Dean and Deluca back in the 80s when I was a student at NYU. It was gorgeous, and so much time and effort went into those beautiful displays of fruit,flown in from all corners of the globe, the tiny little chocolate Burdick mice, the fresh breads ... as employees we heard that “they” wanted only gorgeous young people pulling espressos and boxing up mini meatloaves...kind of seemed that way. And, not a bad place to live out my NYC dream, where with my tiny paycheck, I could buy a little container of elderflower soda and pretend to be just like our customers. I’m sad , but not surprised to see it go.
35
Grocery shopping “as a work of art”? How pretentious.
14
NYC just ain't what is used to be.
Yes it is safer and the air is cleaner but it seems as if we have lost our soul.
I still cannot get over the closing of Florent in Meatpacking a few years ago and my neighbor a few floors up from me is in mourning still over Lincoln Plaza Cinema's demise.
Progress? Not sure. I guess if things did not change, we would still be getting ice delivered and riding horse and buggies.
However, the NYC of my youth is gone and has morphed into just any other city with all the consequences of globalism rearing its ugly head.
Hudson Yards? Please... To me, it is Dubai.
What's next to go, Central Park?
Perhaps I should re-read Herbert Marcuse One Dimensional Man (read it in college in 1973) It seems like Herb might have nailed it.
79
I haven’t gotten over Florent closing either, already 11 years.
10
@Richard Cohen
Re-read Walter Benjamin “Arcades” ...
1
I don't know about D & D but I knew this was going to happen to Barney's the second they got rid of their Husky Boys Dept.
22
@Fenn
When I was about to graduate high school in the early 70's my parents took me to Barney's on a late Friday afternoon. It was still a discount store (!) then, and I got to meet a genial "Mr. Barney", the old founder, who was patrolling the premises. They bought me a heavily reduced navy blue YSL suit, which I wore once and had already outgrown in a few months. I also had to cut off my glorious locks for the occasion, which fortunately, grew back.
4
Funnily, yes it does matter.
Who remembers what was it called -- the Charleston tea room at B. Altman... now a expensively redone Cuny Grad Center. I bought things there In the days when clothes were supposed to last more than one season. Cashmere - on sale.
I discovered Nars at Barney's on 17th St. Beautiful odd things to buy or to admire. The Heaven and Hell Christmas windows on Madison Avenue were among the best ever. Ever Bergdorf's weren't great last year. Stupid me.. Had I taken pictures I would have a book or two by now. Eating at Barney's was also a delight.
Much less pretentious and more fun than most serious stores for ladies and gentlemen in Manhattan. (Bonwit's is also gone.)
Dean and Deluca was a great purveyor -- freshly ground bison -- at a reasonable price. (Think about it where can I find rabbit, venison (I don't like it but), wild duck (Dad used to bring it home), calf's tongue, decent veal (I know animal torture), even chicken liver! can be hard to find these days.
Amazon's Whole Foods competes pricewise on some items now with Trader Joe's! I am quite specific about what I buy where. When my Key Foods at 86th and Amsterdam is gone... will I have to go to Greenpoint?
Yes, it matters. Life is diminished. The super rich never cooked: the sub zero refrigerators, freezer had a bottle from expensive vodka refilled with the cheap stuff. Maybe some cocktail peanuts. (Diet secret: big dinner; coffee black, all day.)
12
@Auntie Mame
Charleston Gardens!!!
5
@Auntie Mame - I loved B. Altman!
6
@PM: me too! Got my first store charge card there, and still have an Albert Nipon dress I bought there...
3
Barneys was interesting when it was downtown, not so much uptown. I always preferred Balducci's to D&D.
And Manhatten was much more interesting when artists and kids could still find some crazy place to live that they could afford... I lived there in the mid to late 80's and I find it way too sanitized now, but that started some time ago.
33
I recently traveled through Bangkok and stopped at a D&D to find a sandwich before a very long flight. There was absolutely nothing to eat that resembled real food. Just some attempt at copying a fancy Italian sandwich. It looked like a Starbucks. When these bling brands get bought out and replicated they lose the essence of what made the original stores great. Though Krispy Kreme donuts had a crazy long line at the same airport.
I stuck to the airport lounge and had some Thai noodles.
12
They sell what wealthy Thais like to eat - soft breads and homogenized flavors.
I worked at D&D on Prince Street "back in the day" as did many aspiring artists, musicians and would-be bohemians. None of us could afford to shop there, but Giorgio and Joel always made sure we tasted everything so we had some killer lunches. I was also one of the people who handwrote the labels on those iconic spice cans. It was a different city in the late 70s and early 80s. The only thing that has remained constant is what was my world is the store I could afford to shop at - DePalo's Fine Foods on Grand Street. Still going strong because the DiPalo family has remained loyal to their customers and the quality of the products in their store.
68
@Nan
When ever I think of Dean & Deluca I think of the handwriting on those spice tins!
7
There are a lot more important issues than food and fashion in this country now, but as a resident of NY for almost 50 years and Soho for 30 years, I am in agreement with this article which is lamenting the loss of cultural aspects that defined and made NYC the cultural center it once was. It's been taken over by hedge funds and Wall St so nothing remains but the zero sum game.
28
Why do we put these businesses up on a pedestal then lament their downfall?
This is the same fate of most creative businesses that become too big, lose their uniqueness and then suffer. Maybe smaller is better? Maybe more money isn't the right thing? Either way, I don't care.
8
@Matt And yes you cared enough to leave a comment here. So the ups and downs as Ms. Bellafante so poignantly and brilliantly relates in this article obviously meant something to you.
8
I used to care. And I definitely support local business. But if and when they start chasing $$ or sell out for a quick buck I am always disappointed.
I miss those old stores. I miss a simpler time. But In the end businesses generally only care about money. And that's sad.
4
@PJ and apparently read the article, to comment!
3
I worked at D&D in the 80’s. It was great to be in Soho among artists. Keith Harring was a regular.
I lived down the block in a studio, with a working fireplace. Paid $700 a month. My landlord was a total mafioso, so I had to pay my rent in person, in cash, in the basement of his restaurant in Little Italy.
Giorgio and Joel taught me so much about food. They introduced me to Balsamic Vinegar from Modena, freshly made mozzarella , and the finest prosciutto.
This article makes me sad.
106
As a former newyorker, I cannot agree more with this article. For its clarity and association of ideas and facts, it is a sound sociological study on the current state of our civilization. Cities, and by nature New York are urban testimonies of great shifts, for the positive or the negative. During the 1990s, NY became a beacon of the cultural effects of globalization. You could experience both the energy of its multiculturalism, and of the promise of its opportunities. The excitement was in the air. Now it risks becoming a legacy of this soulless epoch and of its damaging greed.
31
As a former newyorker, I cannot agree more with this article. For its clarity and association of ideas and facts, it is a sound sociological study on the current state of our civilization. Cities, and by nature New York are urban testimonies of great shifts, for the positive or the negative. During the 1990s, NY became a beacon of the cultural effects of globalization. You could experience both the energy of its multiculturalism, and of the promise of its opportunities. The excitement was in the air. Now it risks becoming a legacy of this soulless epoch and of its damaging greed.
7
So many wonderful stores have come and gone in NYC. As someone who never could afford the merch, I still went to enjoy the creativity of the vendors and the places. Now, I do think that ABC Carpet remains as the one large emporium that presents interesting pieces in an interesting fashion. (Haven't been there in the last year, however.)
15
@Saba Sadly even ABC Carpets is a shell of its former self. Was there a few weeks ago and was shocked at the shrinkage. That special ABC experience is gone.
6
Barney's as "art"? Surely you jest. I went into Barney's once in the 1980's, and was waited on by a 26 year old wannabe model, who with her insouciant look made it clear to me the store was two-dimensional frippery. I went back to my salesman in the men's department on the tenth floor of Lord & Taylor and stayed there until I moved to Annapolis.
10
I moved to Soho in the early 70’s, knowing nothing about fancy cheeses or interesting necklaces. Once in a while,I treated myself to a chunk of Brin D’Amour,after Georgio DeLuca offered me a taste. Dean and DeLuca became a place where I discovered,and when I was graced with a nice freelance check,bought something that I had never tried before. I miss shopping, or at least,looking at,interesting stuff in downtown Manhattan. I still live on the edge of Soho,which has become a rich peoples bore ,occupied by empty stores owned by Dior and Tiffany, with a bored security guard standing by the window. The Union Square Greenmarket is the last stand of interesting goods, for me,in lower Manhattan.
29
My husband and I are artists who have lived in a Tribeca loft since 1985. In 2016 our landlord served us eviction papers. We spent thousands fighting them (they are a religious organization—ha ha) but because we are not rich, we gave up a few months ago and accepted a paltry buyout that has us leaving our loft, which we developed long before they bought the building, in 2021.
The money is just too big for landlords to resist. They’re now doing everything they can to evict artists in rent-controlled lofts. Our landlord demanded more than a thousand pages of documents and worse, it turned out they were spying on our comings and goings with a hidden camera, just like the Stasi in East Germany. We might have won in Court, but it’s a crapshoot—-a risk we can’t afford.
In New York, the creative class, of which we are a part, will soon be nonexistent, and the city will be made up of hedge fund managers and their yoga wives. In terms of money making fine; in terms of energy and vitality going into the future, forget it.
260
Very thoughtful article. Too often, outside forces drive the failure of businesses. Sometimes they are unforeseen, but sometimes they are known to be problematic but happen anyway. There's a high-priced zip code in Denver where shopping used to be very pleasurable. Now, it's iconic mall charges for parking. Department stores do not validate! So while my family always shopped there during the holidays, spending a few thousands, we now go elsewhere. BTW, there's a Whole Foods near that mall that does not charge for their customers to park, and they are busy all the time!
5
I recall visiting NYC regularly in the late 80's - early 90's. A trip to Barney's was always on my list, and I inevitably purchased something special there,that I hadn't seen any where else. I recall the Barney's warehouse sales before the outlet days.
The move uptown destroyed Barney's for me. It just became another super expensive, uninteresting box, where I no longer felt truly welcomed.
12
@Darrell Agreed. I remember buying my suits, ties and shirts at Barneys when I lived in NYC up to 1979. There were excellent sales on all items and I could chose the floor for the type of suits I wanted to buy. I still have suits and ties purchased there that I have not worn in several decades. I agree that moving up to Madison Ave. from their original location around 17th street may not have been an excellent idea.
7
I'm 6' 5" and lived in Chelsea on 15th street between 7th and 8th avenues. Needless to say I was not too impressed with Barney's. On the other-hand I found a tailor from China that was able to make the suits I needed for my job. This was in the 1980's.
3
Barney’s in the 1960s was in Chelsea and was where you found a deep selection of value priced suits. Nothing fashionable about it. In the spring the aisles were full of boys and their parents, including lots of “huskies”, in from the burbs looking for a bar mitzvah or confirmation suit that fit and didn’t break the bank. Things change.
21
The reality is we live or are influenced by New York city which has charmed the world for over 400 years. Out city is one of the oldest cities in America but you would never know it by simply walking around. Why, because New York is always forward looking. We don't have any stores that sell buggy whips anymore. Times change and the truth is it is much easier to sit in front of a screen and order what you need instead of going out. Now can anyone make an app that washes the cloths does the dishes and takes the dog out so I can have more time to shop, please.
2
Yes it is easy to sit in front of a screen but oh the things you will miss by not experiencing the outside world for yourself.
9
I remember when it was Barney’s Boys Town. It morphed into a high end wannabe. I guess like Icarus it flew too close to the sun. Just another classic rise and fall.
12
Barney’s customer service has always been exceptional. If I needed something for a special event the salesperson would take me from floor to floor to find the right things. On a few occasions when I tried something on that was Uber expensive I was told in a whisper that it was going on sale in a week and they would hold it in the back. “Come back next week”
Nothing but love and respect for Barney’s.
Anyone remember Charivari?
13
@JfromNY
Yes, Charivari was magnificent! I was in my early 20s and was from that "save, save, save," then "spend on one thing during the sale" school. Only way I could do it.
7
@JfromNY I sure hope they processed Trayon Christian's belt return with great professionalism! Nothing but schadenfreude for Barneys.
As for Charivari, I fondly remember their billboard ad with Darci Kistler and Robert LaFosse dancing on a NYC rooftop in impossibly glamourous clothes over the tagline "never coming to a mall near you".
2
Barneys lost me when they launched that dinosaur show.
2
Great writing is sometimes identified by the shock of recognition- our own vague thoughts brought into sharp relief upon a page.
I am shocked.
Thank you Ms Bellafonte.
32
@Jackie Bennett
And right back to you with your own phrase, Jackie Bennett.
4
What a wonderfully written article. Thank you.
11
As a teenager in the 21st century, I did not get to experience the culture of New York. I've always heard stories about going to New York and experiencing the top shopping in New York City. I have always wanted to experience one of those trips ever since as I was little, but now it is like New york sites are everywhere. New York is becoming just another place in this world. Don't get me wrong, NYC will always be a special place, but it is losing its touch. It is becoming just another shopping in town place. Also, even with its unique stores, the prices are outrageous, making it hard for non-rich people to buy items. Most of the time, the pieces are the same everyday clothing but, is overprices because it has a fancy name brand on it. People can now go online to Amazon and find the prices for even cheaper. I wish NYC could find its unique touch again, to make it a special magical place to be.
27
Back in the eighties - when I lived in Washington Heights -- I had a neighbor upstairs from me who worked at Barneys --
A wonderful, young, charming, friendly and ebullient gay man - everyone knew him - and we would often hear his wonderful laughter echoing throughout the inner courtyard of our building --
I would often run into him in the hallways - either on his way to - or returning home from his job at Barneys - always impeccably dressed - one of those people who could remain wrinkle-free on the hottest and most humid of summer days --
Unfortunately - this was a dark time in the gay community - and my friend became one of the early victims of the AIDS scourge from that time --
His family came to clean out his apartment - and I went down to meet them and offer my condolences --
Standing with my friend's mother by his closet - she pulled out this absolutely gorgeous full-length men's overcoat, which I saw him wear often -
When I mentioned that to his mother - she turned to me and asked if I would like to have it --
I awkwardly tried to say I couldn't possibly - but she insisted - and liked the idea of the coat being worn by someone who knew her son --
I still have that coat today - and I wear it in the winter over my tuxedo -- and every time I look at that coat - I think of my friend, and smile --
Barneys made close and fade away - but I have a memory from them which will last forever ...
476
@Howard G Beautiful story, thanks. I hope it becomes a NYT pick!
23
you made me cry. I have such memories. what a beautiful post!
14
Translate expansion to mean “overloaded with debt by absentee owners” and the statement would be more accurate. This forced both chains to stop innovating just when innovation was most necessary. The world moved on.
40
The Park is closing too on 10th Ave and I think we'll all miss the spaces that made NYC unique as they pile up more condos and every other store that isn't empty is a Starbucks. The young waiter at The Park was lamenting coming to NYC to late to see what it was all about after the cool clubs closed and the unique shops were forced out, makes me wonder if money doesn't destroy taste in the end. Why live in nyc or anywhere really if you don't ever have to leave your apt and if you do what happens when there isn't anyplace to really go?
44
@Travis `
In the early 2000's we used to meet at the Park after work for cocktails by the fire. We were there one evening when my wife went in to labor. We got a ride straight to St. Vincent's. Which itself was shut down to be converted to condos. A hospital. Eventually we packed and left.
Out-gentrified.
19
@Billy @Travis ` Seems like money destroys taste and common sense. To convert a hospital, of all things, into luxury condos when the population keeps growing, makes absolutely no sense.
8
i loved to go to Dean&DeLuca in the early weekend mornings (best when it is raining) and just linger through the place before getting coffee and a pastry...it felt like another place, and a place that reminded me to be grateful for this city and all it offered. Barneys was were I would go to get inspired, and sell my items on occasion. Both were an oasis for the senses and tired mind, and a place to be fed, or just nibble.
15
Two good friends on life support, Barneys and Dean & Deluca.
9
The last sentence of this article deserves a Pulitzer prize all its own. However, Barneys and DandD were absurdities three or four years after they opened. The money was paraded there from the beginning. Where ever the NYTimes hints it's chic to shop the dull lemmings of New York will always flock. The chick world of NYC is one of the most programmed and gullible cliques that exists in the world.
16
The day Dean and Deluca opened in 77, the first grocery store in what had been a food desert, I ran over from my funky musicians' loft at Greene and Spring to check it out. I was wowed by the layout but shocked by the prices. It seemed like everything was about double anywhere else - a precursor to Whole Paycheck. I griped about this to a guy by the door who seemed to be an owner or investor and he looked me up and down, smiled sadly and said, "Well, kid, maybe you can't afford to live in this neighborhood." It was the first time gentrification slapped me upside the head - but not the last.
162
@Gabriel Rotello
High prices do not = gentrification
Simulacra = gentrification
“You get what you pay for”: part of what you pay for is an exceptionality premium.
If it was affordable to everybody it’d be interesting to nobody.
1
"We have allowed our habits to become so effectively manipulated toward convenience"
I was going to go shopping today, but thanks to Amazon's control of my shopping choices I've been effectively manipulated to receive a UPS package instead of actually driving to a business. Apparently this is a bad thing?
5
@asg21 yes, this a bad thing! You should be supporting local business, for the sake of a vibrant, healthy neighborhood/community. There can be a balance.
13
@asg21 if you enjoy an urban experience and actually being out on the sidewalk with other people, experiencing something together, finding uniqueness to be an attribute, then YES, it's a bad thing. And when every retail outlet in Denver becomes a smoke shop, maybe you'll understand.
18
What if my local businesses are Target, Duane Read, and CVS? If there were mom & pop stores nearby that sold what I recently purchased on Amazon, I would be glad to patronize them. But leave my apartment to shop at Target (and, by the way, probably pay more)? No.
7
“These kinds of changes would ultimately remake New York as well, as the city seemed to enter into a brutal and protracted phase of bad karmic trades, losing what made it extraordinary in exchange for the genericism that so many people for so long had come to the city to avoid.”
This statement summed it up best. I lived in Manhattan in the 1990s, and then LA for a long time after that. Today, I am in the burbs north of LA. I have Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s and Amazon and specialty coffee and organic sweat shacks without the sky high rent or traffic nightmares of city life. Now I realize that everything that made the city special is pretty much available everywhere. Is the city less special now? Or more generic? Idk but this change allowed me to leap the psychological hurdle to leave.
19
So beautifully written, thank you.
18
I don't mourn the loss of Barney's, which to me was more like a museum when it came to the possibility of actually owning something from there. But the demise of the flagship Lord & Taylor broke my heart. I shop at the downtown Boston store these days, and my dog accompanies me and is doted on by the salespeople. Many people of color shop here knowing they will be treated with respect and not suspicion. Maybe it's now owned by a Thai conglomerate, I have no idea, but it was always elegant without being uppity. The one time I did go into Barney's I was reminded of the New Yorker cartoon with the supercilious salesman telling a customer at a jewelry counter: "I'm afraid that one is out of your price range. It costs three zillion dollars."
86
Lord and Taylor is owned by Hudson’s Bay, a giant Canadian retailer.
8
I lived in the West Village in the late 1970s and loved walking to Soho where window shopping was the greatest sport. I would make a habit of walking past Urban Archeology over to Dean and Deluca, not to shop, but to look at the displays of food, true to Ms Bellafante's description, were presented with great beauty and finesse. The vegetables and fruits and glass bottles filled with lord knows what, looked like museum pieces. It was a glorious establishment that for sheer beauty and presentation, had no equals.
37
And probably had an outsized impact on climate change for emphasis on superficial matters.
How much extra effort and resources to get a perfect, unblemished single piece of fruit?
Yes, art is essential.
Just not more important than survival of life on Earth.
6
@Lilly
I shutter to think what our world would be like if people who share your viewpoint ran it.
I may think its silly to aspire to purchase an unblemished single piece of fruit, but who am I to tell someone else they shouldn't?
Perhaps you and your comrades some day will be able to shop at an environmentally conscious GUM, while us in the proletariat wait in line at stores with empty shelves.
10
@Michael
Shudder.....it is shudder
13
Best thing I've read this week! Great stuff!
10
Ms. Bellafante, thank you so much for capturing the exact feeling of saudade that many of us long term New Yorkers feel. "...filling a void rather than satisfying an aspiration. I see only money and all its deprivations." A perfect description. The nuanced humanity of this essay made my day. Thank you . I hope you write a book exploring these sentiments in a longer format.
51
i remember that dean and delta was a major stop for me on my way to the theatre, returning from the theatre - i have always been consumed by the theatre - and whenever i strolled through the store, i was enthralled - back home, in toronto, we had nothing even close to the SoHo food experience - even a muffin held sway - and in recent years, say any time after 1990, aging myself in strong terms - the store was simply a store - no mystique, no sense of adventure or discovery - and often just annoying in its crowds and, too often, its uninterested staff. As for Barneys, I never found a way to enjoy the store: far too much inventory, unable to browse and discover because I always felt that i needed to know what i was looking for as i entered - so, the end has come, or is on its way, and i have no feelings of nostalgia, remorse or anything beyond "well, that's over".
7
New Yorkers motivated to shop by convenience rather than "sculptural" retail spaces? Perish the thought!
For a city that changes as rapidly as New York does, it's remarkable how much print is devoted to nostalgia for its recent past.
10
Lamenting the fall of Dean & Deluca and of Barneys?
Cry us a river.
I’ve been in this town for 20 years. Came here with nothing. Rose from barely able to pay my rent to having my name on a deed in a decent building that others aspire to. (Good timing, I’m not rich.)
I never shopped in those stores, nor would I have shopped there, not at those prices. They were filled with absurdly expensive items. Tchotchkes for silly people with too much money and too little sense.
May those stores disappear into the darkness of Gone and Forgotten.
Many more overpriced NYC “landmarks” are still to fail. The comeuppance for being overpriced will be their downfallence.
26
@Who’d A Thunk It?
what part of Barney's Madison Ave. rent doubling overnight do you not understand? You think the space is just going to be filled with a $Dollar Store where you can buy your wares? Get serious. The internet and Amazon is killing these stores, not their prices.
13
Or unrestrained real estate costs
7
“I see only money and all its deprivations.“
Look more closely. There's less going on than you think. Everybody is nostalgic for their younger days.
14
@Gary Ostroff - Thank you.
People who were patronizing these stores in the 70s and 80s would have been young then and (at least) middle aged now. Of course they are nostalgic for those days.
This is gorgeously written. Thank you!!
4
Who wants to pay $8 for a muffin, and $150 for a tie?
And made to feel poor.
41
@Postette
You're thinking normal... I worked at an expensive kitchen store on Columbus Ave in the early 80s. A customer wanted to buy a Krupps coffee maker $99.00. He complained. I said it's on sale at Macys for $59. You could take a cab. Have it wait. Take it back home... and still save $20. He looked at me in horror. And bought the over priced Krupps. Price is important to some people, I guess.
16
@Postette ,,,But they were good muffins.
6
Thems sum heady observations ma'am.
1
An empty life or head that palls without trendy food or clothing.
3
“Barneys first came to the attention of the masses via legacy media, the HBO series “Sex and the City,’’ a show about a writer who dressed beautifully, outlandishly, expensively guided simply by her own spirit.”
Barney’s was in vogue with the masses long before the arrival of HBO’s Sex and the City. In 1971, Barney’s was ensconced on 17h Street and expanded at that location. Its advertising motto was “Select, Don’t settle.” By the late 1970s, one could sense the importance of Barneys because of the usual number of limos double-parked in front of the store. But greed apparently led the Pressman family to expand uptown, and that, sadly, was the beginning of the end of the “old” Barneys – the Barneys of 17th Street.
35
@Ray - the Holiday windows at the downtown store were much more fun, too - so unexpected and shocking. Chelsea was a blast back then.
8
agreed. Barney's was a blast. I used to live down the street from the 17th St. store. the new windows was always an event! I could rarely afford anything but when I did buy something it was special.
4
This is so gorgeously written, it's like an elegy to the famed shops. Well done, Ginia!
4
Perhaps there was a time when these stores actually purveyed what they represent: artisinal consumption that couldn't be achieved in the same fashion anywhere else. But increasingly it seems like these sorts of companies were more interested in duping well-moneyed but insecure consumers intent on engaging in conspicuous consumption for performance's sake.
Case in point: I visited Barney's online store portal after reading the recent NYT article about their closings and was greeted with $800 - $1400 tennis shoes and similarly priced fanny packs. The shoes were overdesigned and made from cheap materials, with no real leather. They probably cost just $15 to make. Yet, because a fool and their money are soon parted, that hefty luxury tax seems to be the point of buying such ridiculous trappings in the first place.
You can keep your criminally overpriced $1,000 leather fanny packs and $15 chocolate babkas made from processed palm oil. The world should be done with such wasteful trappings.
111
When marketing have found ways to entice consumers into paying 10 cents worth of coffee for $5 and $149 for a 10-cent hot dog, there must be millions of suckers gladly waiting to be fleeced every day.
7
@S. L.
I think your hyperbole is a little strained. Overhead often makes up a substantial portion of the cost of that cup of joe. I can’t speak to the $145 hot dog though. Holy cow?!
5
I remember Barney's as the place where you could go to be certain that the sales people would ignore you.
129
As an architecture student in Chicago, I bought a pair of lambswool pants on sale at Barney's for 75$. They remain my all time favorite pair of pants. (Long gone by now)
As a senior designer, I might be able to swing a t-shirt on sale now...in the Chicago Store...but probably not.
I loved the hope that with luck, you could go in and find something incredible and affordable. Those days apparently are gone.
6
“Does It Matter?” Well, it certainly matters if you happen to work at one of them. And it matters if you’re a trend and fashion obsessed shopper or NYT reader. But in reality, it’s about the same as Sears, A&P, Duesenberg Gimbels, or thousands of other “cool” retailers and manufacturers who have disappeared, for thousands of other reasons.
7
Different times... different people. What both sell now isn't as precious/uncommon as it used to be. They lost their cache.
6
My father was a bankruptcy attorney and dinner conversation often centered on the businesses that expanded too quickly and/or forgot their original mission. Perhaps Barney's and Dean & Deluca made the same mistakes.
18
One of the high points in Barney's retail history was when Simon Doonan designed the storefront windows... I, along with scores of other New Yorkers thronged to see Barneys windows and their humorous and provocative displays. It was a delight and was the first indicator of what else lay inside...
It was masterful merchandising lifted to high art and made clever business sense too! Alas Barney's discontinued to invest in its windows and assigned its valuable street frontage to conventional displays. (I suppose the store's reputation was expected be the draw)
Just a few blocks away, Bergdorf Goodman still knows the value of standing out... at the street. Window art still makes BG the success it is.
Until the owners of Barneys appreciate the value of such merchandising again, I fear there will be little chance of a lasting turnaround. Retailing is not all about crunching numbers... It is about creating magic.
25
I used to look forward to the new windows at the downtown Barney's and always appreciated the great installations.
1
Viewed by ownership, it is the third Barney's and the third Dean & Deluca. We are not talking about Prince Street or Seventh Avenue. Surely the first iteration of either store could be around today, rents and internet shopping notwithstanding. When the businesses were expanded beyond their earning capacity, they failed. The more concerning matter is that commercial rents in most NYC neighborhoods are too high for a Dean and Deluca or a Barney's to open today. High rent destroys retail diversity.
78
I worked across the street from Dean & DeLuca in D.C. for 5+ years. We always called it "Dean & Depuka." Any prepared food could be counted on to be on the turn.
6
When these stores expanded outside their Manhattan footprint, they ceased to be special. They turned into expensive also ran commodities. At some point their names will be purchased from their bankruptcy trustees. And the new owners of these storied “names” will open one theme park worthy store in Midtown next to the Disney Store. Thereby restoring them to their exclusive New York origins, albeit as petrified caricatures of their former incarnations. Don’t forget to buy a Barney’s candle before you leave for the airport.
19
A big part of these stores' demise, as others have pointed out here, is that what they used to sell uniquely is now available everywhere. In general the quality of food across the country is much higher than it was a few decades ago, and both food culture and fashion culture have become mainstream.
What you wind up mourning in this kind of article, then, isn't the loss of places that made special things available—since those special things are now everywhere—but the exclusivity that you used to enjoy as a cool downtown person in the 70s.
Beware the kind of elitism that insists things were better back when they were only available to you.
314
@Jon Bruner You’re missing the point. It’s not about access— it’s about aspiration...
Now that everyone is clamoring for the same depressing, accessible, status-conscious clothing (or food), obtaining it no longer represents a form of personal expression. It’s just a matter of conformity.
In the 70s— and occasionally more recently— people chose clothing because it spoke to their inner spirit, not their desire to fit in seamlessly among the yuppies...
That’s largely gone now thanks to the untenable cost of living in a place that used to be the home of artists. Finance people and corporate lawyers— I sadly count myself among them— took their place, but we haven’t replaced their soul...
51
@Jon Bruner I beg to differ on the quality. I think we at least in NY are paying through our noses for sub standard quality be it food at Whole Foods or fashion. I came to NY in 1970 and yes the food was appalling but the food at Dean & Deluca when it first opened was sublime. Now everything is standardized on a level that is not exceptional at all. This is what the article is articulating.
49
Brilliant
2
Excellent article. So true and so sad that "exceptional" has given way to "expensive" and "common". The convenience of the internet is killing traditional retail and the explosive costs of NYC only exacerbate the problem.
15
Nostalgia for any particular variant of shallow consumerism doesn't resonate with me.
41
@Dave very well said! Agreed!
2
I remember one of my first visits to the original Barney's right after law school and after moving to NYC. It was the most delicious experience ever! The stairs, the shoe department to the left of the entrance, the people (while there Naomi Campbell sauntered through the door, I gasped). It was hip and cool and while I was new to NY, it was what I aspired to be. Looking back it was a little ridiculous, but became even more absurd when the store moved uptown and honestly, I refused to go to Barney's again. I did, but it really was not nearly as wonderful. That Upper East Side thing just didn't appeal to me and alas it obviously didn't appeal to many. Oh what a time it was...
4
The downfall of Barney's began decades ago, when Gene and Bob Pressman decided to expand the family business. I did a piece on that over-the-top, cost-is-no-object expansion. Fred Pressman, their father and the genius behind the store's success, told me, unhappily, "In our lifetime, we will not be able to pay for this." He knew what Virgil knew and his sons had to learn the hard way: "Admire a large vineyard. Cultivate a small one."
211
This is all beyond me. When I could, I bought bread and pastry at neighborhood stores. I look forward to farmer and green markets to buy fish and vegetables. In May, I buy ramps to sauté with asparagus at those markets. I do need a store to "curate" my culinary needs.
For tailored clothing, I go to Brooks Bros, which is severely threatened by the new retail environment. For casual clothing, I have turned to catalogs for years. For real outdoor clothing, I might try Paragon.
In effect, I was never interested in being on the cutting edge of fashion. I also realized that the so called "street photographed of fashion," Bill Cunningham was taking photos of people in his circle as much as of people on the street, when the same model turned up twice in one week.
8
I have no sympathy for any business seeking to drive up the cost of food. There was a shortage of places to shop in the Village, that fed their success. It is fine, I suppose, to cater to the wealthy, but going beyond that makes trouble. But these days, any business, once it has been sold by its founders, might just as well not exist. It will be so changed by the new owners, and too-often ruined, as in this case.
22
I think Ms. Friedman unwittingly hit the nail on the head when she said she was careful to shop at Barneys and Dean when merch was on sale.
Too many people did the same thing.
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@Taz Who could afford Barney's otherwise? Those who could, did not wait for sales
5
Without thinking about it too much, seems to me that Dean & DeLuca et al. are to some extent the victims of their own success. In recent decades, the American palate, at least in the larger metropolitan areas countrywide, has expanded. Supermarkets and even smaller grocery stores often carry many items that were once considered gourmet items or specialty items. So why go to Dean & DeLuca and pay through the nose for ultra-exclusive foods when you can go to your local market and get an excellent selection of French cheeses, gourmet prepared foods, and all the rest.
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@Gary J Moss Geez, I can order fancy stuff through Amazon (and wheelwell carries many gourmet options in various stores as well).
4
NYC used to be filled with interesting people who wore cutting edge clothing and made unique things.
Now, I walk around the areas that used to seem funky and fun to me, and I see people who look and dress exactly like the folks in the suburbs crowding the chain restaurants. I guess they work in finance.
It's getting boring.
I never had any money, but I always bought bread and pastry. at Dean & DeLuca. It was expensive, but I was not resentful as I now am of the Amazon Foods Empire.
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@RW You can always tell who the transplants are by their outfits. They shop at all of the same chain stores and/or they're trying to imitate some Instagram influencer. Yes, very boring. They're carbon copies of each other.
7
Unfortunately, this article fails to explain some of the dynamics that have gotten Barneys and Dean & Deluca in a pickle.
As has been widely reported, Barney's KNEW their lease situation for twenty years. The time to renegotiate was five years ago, when a threat to relocate would be taken as serious. Now their only viable option seems filing for bankruptcy protection, closing stores and stiffing landlords the rent they agreed to pay.
As I understand it, the Thai entrepreneur running Dean & DeLuca decided to stop paying their bills and divert funds to a new concept store. Perhaps that works in Bangkok - it was a fatal misstep in Manhattan.
98
Many years ago, I went with a friend, now my husband, to Barneys to get some clothing for him. They took one look at us and told us they had nothing for him. We were casually dressed — that must have been our mistake. A few weeks later, we went back to Barney's with my mother, an imposing personality who had experience in retail clothing. Before we knew it, she had salespeople running around serving us, and my friend had a great new wardrobe. We no longer live in New York. I miss lots of things about our hometown, but not Barney's.
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@Alix Ingber My reaction to this news was similar to yours. Unfortunately, when I hear the name Barney's I remember all of the people of color who were harassed/falsely accused of shoplifting. It even happened to a friend of mine; my sympathy is limited.
27
For me, I will remember Barney's as the place where my dad bought cheap suits back in the 1960's.
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And what do you want to do when you grow up, Fiorello?
Interesting. I happen to be built in a way that requires suits to be tailored - even off the rack. Cost, while always important, is never the deciding factor because I simply don't have a choice. Saks always made the necessary effort without complaint. It costs, but it's always been worth it. In 1989, I decided to give Barney's a try. It was a nightmare. Especially, since I cannot stand shopping in general. Needless to say, I never returned even when they opened a new location one half block south of where I live on 7th Avenue.
I am quite surprised they lasted this long.
10
Loved the downtown Barney’s. The coolest of the cool to shop and people watch. When they moved they lost their cache.
Dean and Deluca also the same. I’m afraid both killed by the Internet, but absolutely a thrill to go into when they were at their peak moments.
Unfortunately the city is losing its flavor when these great types of shops close, and people have to resort to Amazon, Seamless etc.
11
Many of the artists who showed in Soho in the early 80s lived there, too. Or if Soho was too expensive, they lived in Tribeca.
It really changed when the art market took off in the mid-80s and suddenly people who'd been doing carpentry on the side or still had a black and white TV or a foam mattress were suddenly rich.
They were traveling, and buying clothes, and celebrating holidays with collectors and dealers instead of friends. And food was a big deal. Along with things like Maude Frizon shoes (Bergdorfs. I may be the only person who remembers those).
The 90s were a morph of that. You could buy women's clothes--kids' clothes too--at Barneys well before the 90s. But the 90s was the mid-late 80s on high octane.
And it just kept going. We stayed at least a little OK until Bloomberg was elected mayor. He did a lot of good things. But he said he'd make NYC a luxury product and he did. He remade 40% of the cityscape.
If you miss the old Broadway bus from the upper west side to the lower east, you know what I mean. But if this is before your time, you have a completely different view of what's happened.
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@Talbot I remember Maude Frizon well, even managed to scrape together enough pennies to buy a couple of pairs on sale at one point. It was quite the splash out for me at the time.
3
I don't shop at Dean & DeLuca--its too expensive. But I grew up with the thought that getting a bag of nuts or candy there indicated a life I would have one day. A kind of NYC glamour that is still alive. I will miss it, and the white tile floors and mourn the class of old city life for the suburban Whole Foods era.
8
@marx
I regret everyone trashing Whole Foods. A national supermarket chain that features organics and won't let trans fats, drug-fed meats, and GMO veggies through the door? How cool!
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@Jerry
I suggest that you re-check the labels at Whole Foods. Since being devoured by Amazon, they now have scores of non-organic foods with GMO's and processed foods with formerly verboten ingredients.
8
Why are people so obsessed about "non-gmo"? That is just a marketing ploy to push people into buying particular brands. Blueberries that are firmer with a slight crunch - yes please! Seedless watermelon- love it. If that's genetically modified, then I welcome it.
9
Manhattan wouldn't be Manhattan without Lobel, Grace's and so many more. However, with prices what they are and even a small room at the Algonquin costing over $600 a night, I haven't been back in some years and that's sad.
Millions of us love New York, the energy, the great mix of people all over the world and now, thankfully, the absence of Donald Trump. If we only didn't have to take out a second mortgage to enjoy it.
34
This analysis runs counter to just about everything else I've read, including in the NYT. Most attribute the decline to the fact that what used to be available only at these stores is now much more widely available. Morels, high quality extra virgin olive oil, caviar, and more are available at my local supermarket. (Relatively) obscure designers that were discovered at Barney's are now found at many other stores and online. This seems to be a rather myopic, Soho-centric, nostalgia-driven perspective.
82
I remember Balducci's fondly. Ok, so it was a couple blocks above 8th St., but it was the best grocery store ever. D&D was a somewhat sterile imitation of Balducci's.
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@Judith When I was in High School in the early 70s a visit to my sister at NYU always entailed a visit to Balducci's. The contrast to the stores I was used to in Western Pa was otherworldly..it seemed the height of cosmopolitan sophistication. When I moved to NY in the late 70s I felt the same about the downtown Barneys. I recall buying a pair of Perry Ellis shorts in the early 80s at Barney's and being mocked mercilessly on a visit home by my friends for their length..of course a few years later they too were all wearing longer shorts! That was the only time I believe I was even a tiny bit of a trendsetter but that was living in NY back then. You could be exposed to such interesting things before they filtered into the wider culture.
32
@Judith
1. "...a couple blocks above 8th St." Why make it sound derogatory? That was prime West Village territory, right across from Jefferson Court & the Women's House of Detention. Always outranked Soho. (I've lived on both Charles St. & Spring St. In their prime.)
2. "D&D was a somewhat sterile imitation of Balducci's." Never. Like saying Barney's is/was a knockoff of Bendels."
15
As a resident of Charlotte (where Dean & DeLuca first expanded outside of NYC) I foresaw its coming downfall when it abruptly closed its locations here; although it was blamed on "failure to come to terms on a new lease" it's more likely that it was unable to meet the term that says "pay your rent".
Barneys simply pushed the admonitions that "fashion is purchased; style is developed" and "fashion is fleeting; style is timeless" to outrageous extremes. Its "who would wear that?" quotient approached infinity, both for its pricing and for its outlandish impracticality. Likewise the answer to "who CAN wear that?" steadily declines as the average waistline grows and grows.
The Barneys customer who can make the occasional purchase has simply vanished: casual workwear and a diminution of dressy social events mean that the masses now head to H&M, Zara, Uniqlo and elsewhere for threadbare and unstructured togs meant to last weeks rather than years.
32
dean & deluca - felicity! fun runs to georgetown store for hostess gifts!
barney's - SATC! shopping with friends for shoes!
somehow i never got the same warm and fuzzies from zara or h&m. not even when fast fashion stores were new in the states and everybody wanted to go there just to see what the fuss was about. sigh.
7
Beautifully written article that captures the sadness I feel -- but couldn't previously identify -- about the demise of these storied retailers.
79
Remember when Banana Republic in the Village was a great destination? It sold (gasp!) travel books and cool stuff. It morphed into something like The Gap and alas, no books.
114
I remember their store in Boulder CO that was entirely safari wear! Unforgettable!!
25
@PMD
Banana Republic was owned by the Gap.
5
@PMD Banana Republic started as a catalogue. It was fabulous. Everything was travel or safari oriented. Then the safari themed stores opened. Then it was sold to the GAP, and lost all of its purpose. Sad.
37
My favorite recollections of the late 1970's New York - going to the Yun Luck restaurant on Doyers St in Chinatown where 4 people could feast on a table-full of food (and beer from the bodega down on Pell St.) for about $20; sitting on a loading dock in Tribeca listening to a jazz band play at a party in a definitely not-upscale loft on a Saturday night; walking the streets of the Village at 2AM and watching the vegetable and fruit deliveries to the shops on Bleeker St. (remember when there were green grocers on Bleeker St.?). Not a single trendy restaurant or curated cup of coffee in sight.
191
@David DiRoma Gone, but not forgotten. But definitely gone . . . RIP Manhattan (and a few sizeable chunks of Brooklyn & Queens too). But, hey, you can still feast for $20 and get beer down the street in a bodega in any number of hoods in Mexico City. You heard it first here (just keep it up your sleeve, would you?)
8
@David DiRoma
I left NYC in '99 after 20 years once Manhattan was done. Had some glorious fun, but I'm an artist and musician and it was clear as a death knell that New York's cultural moment was over.
11