The Shophound

The Window Watcher: Barneys Returns To Holiday Humor

After last few years' well-meaning but ultimately not particularly festive "Green" and "Hippie" themes, Barneys has thankfully rediscovered the funny for its Holiday windows this year —and it's about time!
The 35^th anniversary of "Saturday Night Live" has given the store more than enough material for four big windows, and we can't help but celebrate anyone who would highlight The Coneheads, Father Guido Sarducci, King Tut and our all-time favorite, Roseanne Roseannadanna. Yeah we're old school when it comes to SNL, but there are plenty of familiar characters plucked from throughout the years including Will Ferrell's Janet Reno, Wayne & Garth, Mango, Mary Catherine Gallagher and the maddeningly non-gender specific "Pat", all rendered in the store's signature papier-mâché.

Click HERE for a complete slideshow of all four Madison Avenue windows

More Christmas Creep: In Which We Are Further Annoyed By Barneys & Cartier

We are not really given to ranting that much over here at The Shophound, but last week we felt compelled to express our displeasure at seeing early Christmas decorations going up before Halloween at the Bloomingdale's flagship on 59^th Street. Well, Halloween has just passed, but its still too early, and we were disappointed to see that both Barneys and Cartier are also jumping the gun.
Let's clarify.
We don't want to see Christmas trees and tinsel until we do, and not a moment before.
It's like seeing someone in a gorgeous winter coat in September. You know someone can't wait to wear this fabulous thing, but no matter how stupendous it may be, it's still ridiculously out of season. That's how we felt about Barney's main floor yesterday (pictured above). We are actually excited about their "Saturday Night Live" inspired Holiday theme, we just don't want to see it until it's time.
As for Cartier (below with Saks), their decorations are the same as they are every year, so what's the rush? They stick out like quite the sore thumb at the moment.
Saks Fifth Avenue gets a reprieve. Although they already have their animated snowflake light show installed on the Fifth Avenue storefront, it isn't turned on, and the main floor, as of yesterday, is still happily free of Holiday décor.
Of the big stores we surveyed this week, only Bergdorf Goodman remains untouched by Holiday Elves. Though their current windows, created in conjunction with Dell Computers, are incredibly lavish, they are not in fact the store's Holiday windows, as some other bloggers had assumed.
When will we be ready for Holiday decorations?
The week before Thanksgiving at the earliest
So to recap:
It's still too early for Christmas decorations.
Gold Star for Bergdorf's. ★
Booby Prizes for Barneys and Cartier. ☹
That is all.
Previously:
Today In Jumping The Gun: In Which We Get Annoyed By Christmas In October

New Additions: Gant To Fill Bleecker's Last Spot

Despite the retail shakeout in neighborhoods across the city, Bleecker Street's north end has seen little space go unoccupied in the past couple of years with new stores moving in quickly as soon as old ones depart, usually with no break in occupancy —with a glaring exception. 
353 Bleecker Street has sat empty for the past few years (an eternity in Bleecker time) with a humble "FOR RENT" sign in the window ever since Gerry's (the now defunct sportswear boutique) was forced to move after a rent hike. The narrow shop finally has a taker as Gant, the American founded, now Swedish based, label will take over the space and devote it exclusively to its younger, more stylish Rugger division. Gant USA CEO Ari Hoffman tells WWD that the store will have an “industrial factory” look, with steel benches and cast-iron fixtures.
Look for Gant's Rugger store to open its doors on Bleecker in early 2010
In related news, Gant will be launching a special collection of six vintage inspired shirts (pictured above)today exclusively at Barneys to celebrate the label's 60^th anniversary. Dubbed "The Rugger", "The Hugger", "the Pullover", "The Hubby", "The Sea Island" and "The Cashmere", each style will represent a different decade of the company's history ranging in price from $135 to $295.
Gant to Open on Bleecker Street (WWD)
Gant (Official Site)

Today In Visual Display: Barneys Does Homeless? Really?

Is this a self referential display mocking Barneys' continually rumored financial instability? We think not.
Usually, the OMG blog is focused on what celebrities are naked/fat/drunk on any given day, but one of their editors has a sharp eye for the offensive, and snapped the above picture at the Barneys' Co-op department on Madison Avenue. Interpreting it as visual allusion to homelessness, they asked the pointed question:

Which part of "Taste. Luxury. Humor." is this?

We'll say they scored an 0 for 3 on this one.

UPDATE: A RACKED commenter has informed us all that the display is meant to represent not homelessness but "young hungover guys after a hard night", which is perhaps marginally more humorous, but still fails on the taste and luxury fronts. Seriously. Passed out on a park bench? Yeah, everyone wants to be that guy.
!! OMG, Unbelievable: Homeless Display at Barneys !! (OMG Blog via RACKED)
Barneys Loungers Not Homeless? (RACKED)

Barneys Warehouse Report: The Discounts Begin

Several sources around the web have confirmed that Barneys Warehouse Sale has already begun reducing prices –adding a 25% discount to several product categories. We have heard various reports of shoes and women's RTW getting hit with reductions.
Time to revisit.
Barneys Warehouse Sale 255 West 17^th Street between 7^th & 8^th Avenues, Chelsea

Warehouse Report: Back To Barneys

If you are familiar with the Barneys Warehouse Sale, then this season's edition will hold few surprises. If you are unfamiliar, then the above photo may give you some idea of the vastness of the assortment and the patience required for success in certain departments.
Do we need another sport shirt? Not really, so we couldn't muster up the patience to pore through racks of random shirts. Perhaps our bargain hunter instinct was muted since we were already feeling the shopping glow from the pair of Nudie Jeans we ordered from Gilt Groupe moments before setting out for the Chelsea Barneys Co-op.
So here's our report. We will not be itemizing our findings, because there's no guaranteeing that that pair of Louboutin sandals we saw will be there when you show up, or were ever there in your size. We will say that the women's shoe racks were full of Prada, Manolo Blahnik and Louboutin when we breezed by. Don't expect basics. The racks were a tangle of straps and torturous looking platforms, which might look good today, but we suspect may be on the last of their fifteen minutes. The rest of the women's section was crammed with customers, relatively well behaved, but slightly frantic. The only thing there worth reporting on specifically was a large group of racks featuring an abundance of Lanvin x Acne Jeans at 80% off at least. Of course, it was all indigo denim, but it looked worth going out of one's way for.
Downstairs in Men's, things were a bit more civilized with more room to breathe. The set-up remains as usual, and it's still the best place to go if you need business suits at a great price. There were lots of well priced classics from Barneys private label, and for those willing to invest more, we noticed lots of good options in all sizes from Isaia, still expensive at $999, but not compared to their usual $3,000+ prices.
Dress shirts are almost exclusively private label, which makes us wonder why none of the store's branded shirt inventory seems to ever make it to the warehouse. Ties? A crapshoot. Jeans, sweaters and t-shirts were piled in their usual heaps, waiting for the ravenous rummagers. These are the sorts of things that we wait to look at until at least a week into the sale, when further reductions start to begin. Men's shoes, which can be a parade of horrors in weird colors and materials, were much more appealing this time, with great styles from Prada, Jil Sander and Paul Smith that were worth grabbing. The one style that appeared in great supply (and there's always one) was a black velvet evening slipper from Crockett & Jones embroidered with a gold peace sign on the toe. Apparently there were not enough formal pacifists this year to move them at retail. We expect those to hang around until the bitter end. The less said about the wall of belts, the better. Chelsea Passage was dregs-y as usual, but if you are interested in a few random pieces of Hermès porcelain, head on over.
So that's our visit. There are some more detailed examinations of the various departments over at Racked, but as a general rule, we don't start shopping the Warehouse Sale seriously until next weekend at the earliest, when the signs indicating additional discounts start appearing. The final day, Labor Day, as most know by now, offers the deepest discounts if you can brave a long line.
We wish you the best of luck!
Barneys Warehouse Sale 255 West 17^th Street through September 7^th
Previously:
It's That Time Again: Barneys Warehouse Starts Today
Barneys Warehouse coverage on Racked

It's That Time Again: Barneys Warehouse Starts Today

There is no more reliable sign of Summer's waning as the Barneys Warehouse Sale which began this morning and runs through Labor Day.
No, we didn't get up at the crack of dawn to wait in whatever line may have formed, but we will be stopping by later today to check out this season's offerings.
At this point, no news is good news, although they do throw in a few new twists every season. This far into a year that has seen more sample and clearance sales that we could possibly have foreseen or even begun to follow, we are somewhat curious to see if there is any enthusiasm left for more rummaging amongst crowds through packed racks. Alexander McQueen's recent fully stocked but surprisingly uncrowded sample sale might suggest some sale fatigue has hit, but we suspect Barneys will still be able to pull the crowds. Often, the prices are no lower than they were at the final clearance inside a full Barneys store, and look out for private label goods that may have really been made specifically to be sold in Barneys Outlets rather than Madison Avenue's flagship, but that shouldn't discourage you if you are rarin' to shop.
After the jump, our list of tips, only slightly updated from its original appearance in 2006.

Window Scandal! Barneys Dismantles Violent Diplay

It's been a while since we had a good window scandal.
If you can't count on customers to buy, you can always bet money that they will tell you what they think, and we are certain that the sales associates at Barneys have gotten more than an earful about the displays pictured above.
We know that some visual associate thought a "Godfather" style massacre display would be cool and edgy without thinking that most people, even those sophisticated enough to shop at Barneys, would be more likely to find it frightening, violent and offensive.
We saw these pictures on RACKED a few days ago, and were curious to see how the displays looked in person, but we will have to live without that privilege, since the scene has been dismantled.
We totally get the thinking on both sides. On the one hand, it sort of reminds us of the cult fashion/slasher film "The Eyes Of Laura Mars", but on the other, without Faye Dunaway's glamour, it's hard to get past the ugly, grisly murder it portrays. Perhaps images of elegant ladies getting riddled with bullets are not as useful in selling party frocks as someone thought. They sure will get attention, though.
The display went up not in the exterior windows, but in the entrance vestibule vitrines while creative director Simon Doonan was reportedly out of town. He tells The Daily News "We encourage our display people to be creative. We give them a lot of latitude, but this clearly crossed the line...It's as if someone saw a bad Hitchcock movie." After multiple press inquiries, the windows were taken down, but we can just imagine what those salespeople posted just inside the doors had to hear until that happened.
Bloody Mess as Barneys Kills Display (NY Daily News)
In the Window: Barneys Dresses In Which To Be Caught Dead (RACKED)

The Right Place At The Right Time: A Model Moment At Barneys

All weather reports suggested that The Shophound should have stayed inside today, but instead we decided that it was as good a day as any to hit the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute exhibit "The Model As Muse" (more on that later). Afterward, we took advantage of a lull in the storm to saunter down Madison Avenue, and found ourselves ducking into Barneys to dodge an impending downpour. We could never have known that we would stumble onto a better Model Moment than anything the Met had to offer: Catherine McNeil in a black Lanvin cocktail dress and feathered headpiece, holding a small falcon and being photographed by none other than Terry Richardson.
It's not unusual to find location shoots all around the city, but we usually don't happen upon them on the main floor of Barneys on a Thursday afternoon.
Naturally, we watched the entire slightly surreal event as the willowy McNeil gamely posed with her bird, unfazed by the growing crowd of onlookers whilst occasionally being adjusted by various stylists and bird wranglers. The budding supermodel demonstrated the significance of her craft far better than a museum exhibition ever could. The whole thing ended with the kind of climactic "Yes! Yes! Gorgeous!" bellowing coming from Richardson that we thought only happened on TV show photo shoots.
Thanks to modern technology, the various onlookers took their own pictures, discreetly at first, and then blatantly like... well, like us.
Now that's worth venturing out in the rain for, no?

Unexpected Recession Dividend: Comme des Garçons To Paint Barneys And Chelsea Black

On June 22^nd, Barneys will be graced with its own Comme des Garçons "Guerrilla" boutique in addition to the 11 larger stores thatthe Japanese brand  is opening in celebration of the brand's 40th anniversary this year. The collection is called BLACK after the label's signature color (or anti-color as the case may be). Founder Rei Kawakubo's label is credited by many with starting the Pop-Up craze that has prompted temporary stores for thousands of brands to sprout across the globe over the past few years, so it's fitting that it should celebrate in such a manner.
The Barneys store will last for only two weeks, but Chelsea will host its own 500-square-foot freestanding and longer running BLACK store on 10th Avenue at 17^th Street sometime this month, not far from the brand's flagship on West 22^nd Street. The special collection will include iconic women's styles from the label selling for about half the price of items from the main collection (which is still pretty pricey but should please CDG fans).
Comme des Garçons CEO Adrian Joffe tells WWD that the line was conceived as a response to the global recession, and is meant to last as long as the downturn which, according to many estimates, could take it into 2011 or beyond. Merchandise is meant to be refreshed every six weeks, and the lower prices are possible in part because goods will be produced in markedly larger quantities than the company's usual exclusive runs –meaning there will be plenty for everyone. Joffe also said that adding menswear is a distinct possibility due to strong demand from already opened shops in Asia.
Comme des Garçons Goes Guerrilla With 'Black' by Miles Socha
COMME des GARCONS BLACK Store Openings Hypebeast