What you are looking at above is a big rack of cargo pants currently in the Men's section of the Barneys New York Warehouse Sale. Normally, one would find a huge table full of sweaters that customers would be tossing all over the place sitting in front of this rack, but instead, there is an empty expanse of floor. The sweaters are on the other side of the room —on hangers (!!!)— which any decent shopkeeper knows is an excellent way to ruin knitwear. On the plus side, there is much more room for the throngs of shoppers to move around, but we easily slipped in and out of the sale on its opening day, yesterday, so there actually were no afternoon crowds. What we had come to expect would be a bonanza overflowing with discounted designer clothes has become a much sparser, shorter clearance event for the season, and, it seems clear, a few preceding seasons as well, along with more than a little bit of off-price goods added in to fill the racks. This sale seems sparser and less well organized than ever before.
Folks, the sale's glory days are long gone. Get used to it.
In going through the men's section, the lack of merchandise was glaring, and though there are one or two Pairs of pants from Mason's, Woolrich and Gant by Michael Bastian in the rack pictured, most of the rest appear to be off-price or outlet goods that Barneys is trying to move. Here's a fun hint: If there is a strange abundance of a particular item, you can bet that it has been brought in just for the sale as opposed to coming from Barneys full line stores. Sometimes that's good. We saw a ton of Thom Browne shirts among the racks that we never saw hanging in Barneys regular in-store sale, which is great, and maybe some of them will be left when prices really get slashed on the final days. Unfortunately, they were also shoved into the racks with no regard to size, so buying one at 70% off will be your reward for finding the right size somewhere in the packed racks of shirts. There was also an abundance of previous season Gant Rugger shirts, including many form the last Warehouse Sale, so, again theses will be totally worth it when the get reduced again.
Of course, we also saw a ridiculous amount of merchandise with ripped tags showing no price, or intact ones that had never been properly marked down with red pen to begin with. This is just sloppy, and, frankly, in this day and age, Barney's hand-marked sale ticket system is generally, embarrassingly archaic.
The Men's accessory and scarf bins were similarly diminished along with shoes which are inexplicably crammed in a corner leaving another huge expanse of space that could be better used to make shopping easier. We don't even know what to tell you about the sad collection of neckties hanging on their usual holders by the abundant-as-usual of off-price private label dress shirts. Most of them should just be packed up and sold by the pound to jobbers to get them out of circulation.
As for the women's sections, our friends at Racked have a detailed report, and basically found the offerings similarly disappointing. So overall, this Warehouse Sale is nothing to get excited about. Of course, if you need some suits or dress shirts for work, it can still be a great resource, and if you posses an inveterate hunter-gatherer instinct when it comes to shopping (and The Shophound might know a little something about that) there are bound to be prizes to be found. We will try to keep up with next week's inevitable, reductions, and maybe more merchandise might be brought from whatever is left after the Los Angeles Warehouse sale ends on Monday (which doesn't even sound like a promising prospect), but we warn you to keep your expectations in check
Barneys New York Warehouse Sale runs through Sunday, February 26th at 255 West 17th Street between Seventh & Eighth Avenues, Chelsea
The Barneys Womenswear Sale Is a Bit Of A Let-Down (Racked)
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