The Shophound

THE WINDOW WATCHER If You Can't Get Into The Met, Check Out Bergdorf Goodman's Punk Windows

Considering the bigger-than-ever hype around the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute Gala this week, we are expecting that when the Punk: Chaos to Couture exhibition opens to the public tomorrow, there will be crowds and lines for hours to get in. Since it runs through August, we expect that eventually, things will loosen up, but if you can't wait for a taste of what you might see inside the museum, head over to Fifth Avenue and 58th Street for a look at Bergdorf Goodman's windows that tie into the exhibition.

The visual team at Bergdorf's has pulled out all the stops for a set of displays that approach their dazzling Holiday-level standards featuring not only current merchandise, but also archival items lent by designers like Gareth Pugh, Libertine, Balmain and Acne Studios. The big Fifth Avenue windows are creating an evocative and witty Punk-inspired ambiance that is drawing its own crowds. Rather than attempting to photograph them ourself, we would direct you to the store's own blog where Bergdorf's has kindly done it for us in detail. Better yet, go down and see them yourself, if only for a refreshing departure from the relentless Great Gatsby mania that has swept every other store in the city.

On Fifth Avenue: from Chaos to Couture (58th/5th-Bergdorf Goodman Blog)

TIPS FROM THE PROS: New York's Doyenne Of Personal Shopping Speaks

Be sure to click over to Refiery 29 today for a candid interview with luxury retail's Original Personal Shopper, (and Shophound Friend) Betty Halbreich of Solutions at Bergdorf Goodman. After more than three decades as the legendary retailer's chief personal wardrobe consultant, Betty knows more about fashion, taste, style and clothes than any stylist could ever hope to learn. While she is far to professional to reveal any scandalous secrets, her no-nonsense advice can easily apply to more than just clothes. Click HERE to meet Betty, see some of her favorite fashion pieces out of her own wardrobe, and get a rare glimpse of her office, usually available only to her privileged clients.

85 & Awesome! Meet Bergdorf's Style Dynamo (Refinery 29)

LUXURY SHUFFLE: Bloomingdale's Rolls Out The Luxury Leases For Gucci & Prada

Like any major department store, Bloomingdale's is a continually evolving work-in-progress, and over the past few seasons, the store has added an abundance of luxury megabrands to its main floor that hasn't been seen at 59th & Lexington since the store's fabled heyday in the 1970s and 80s. How did it happen? To a certain extent, Bloomingdale's is becoming less of a retailer and more of a landlord.

The most recent addition to the flagship's string of accessory boutiques are two Gucci boutiques, one for women (pictured above), and one for men, and men's counterparts to the recently opened Prada and longtime Louis Vuitton shops on the Lexington Avenue Arcade section. In fact, the store has just finished replicating a men's version of the Arcade concept along the Third Avenue wall of the main floor including Prada, Gucci, and LV (pictured below) along with smaller spaces for Ferragamo, Turnbull & Asser, Thomas Pink and Paul Smith. Why did Bloomingdale's have to lease out these shops? Probably because they wouldn't have been allowed to carry the labels any other way.

How this happened is a story about how luxury brands are changing their way of dealing with American retailers and what it means for New York's shopping scene. Readers may remember a few seasons ago when Barneys made a surprise announcement that it was dropping Prada's women's apparel and accessory lines from all of its stores. Barneys had been a Prada supporter since long before it had been a household word, and was believed to have a strong business with the brand. However, Prada management was insisting that if the store wanted to continue carrying women's clothes and accessories (shoes and men's collections were not included in the deal) that it would have to turn over space to the brand so it could run its own boutiques under Barney's roof. Barneys claimed that this was against its policies, and let the lines go. For Prada, and other companies like it, this reflected a common practice in Europe that they were anxious to roll out to North America. Department stores in major overseas cities are often almost entirely made up of independent designer shops cobbled together under one roof, but for a store like Barneys which, changes in management notwithstanding, has always prided itself on the taste and curatorial authority of its fashion office and merchandising staff, having a vendor control what is sold in its store was out of the question, so a big chunk of Prada business went out the door. At around the same time, a brand new Prada accessory shop appeared in the North-West corner of the main floor at Bloomingdale's, which has never carried it, and is still working to burnish its luxury image after a damaging trading down during the recession of the 1990's. The existing Prada department at Saks Fifth Avenue also appeared taken over by its vendor at around the same time. We wouldn't be surprised to see a leased Prada apparel shop appear in Saks any day now. They already have one for Vuitton.

Such arrangements are not unprecedented. In the late 1990's Louis Vuitton notified its retail partners that it was closing its wholesale business entirely, and converting to a fully leased shop-in-shop program, and any store that wanted to continue selling it would have to comply. Most of them did, and the Vuitton shops in Bloomingdale's, Saks and Macy's all became leased departments which have been dramatically expanded in the time since. Gucci has quietly engineered a similar exertion of control. The new Bloomingdale's shops as well as a large one upcoming in Macy's are all leases, and the brand has recently taken over existing men's and women's apparel and accessories shops at Saks Fifth Avenue. Only shoes are left to the store's own buyers. As these mega-brands -all of whom have gained dramatically in prestige over the past two decades- get bigger they are increasingly turning to the stores who helped built their success and taking that business back. What it means is that stores that wish to continue selling the labels are forced to give up some of their merchandising control (Bloomingdale's, Saks) or drop the lines (Barneys). So far the one store untouched by all this struggle for control appears to be Bergdorf Goodman, which has had several Gucci departments for years, and in the past few seasons, has repaired a relationship with Prada that was bitterly broken about 15 years ago leading to a decade-long banishment of the brand. Bergdorf's shares Barneys' policy against leasing space in their main product categories in part because both stores encourage cross selling by staff throughout the store that leasing can make difficult and confusing. One wonders if Gucci and Prada will be similarly turned out of Bergdorf's in the coming seasons, or if the brands will let it stand as a single store exception. What we may see going forward is a power shift from the client to the vendor, where luxury mega-brands choose to bestow their cachet on stores that meet their terms. They are already pretty demanding as it is. Brands like Chanel and Giorgio Armani have long lists of requirements for for stores who sell their products as authorized resellers, but leasing is another level of control. Eventually we might see a contest of prestige between the big designer labels and the stores who wish to carry them.

THE WINDOW WATCHER: Hype vs. Craft—Holiday Windows At Bergdorf's & Barneys

Is there any other city like New York when it comes to Christmas windows? Between Saks Fifth Avenue, Lord & Taylor, Bloomingdale's and Macy's among others, what city has such a high concentration of  flagship stores with the kind of huge, continuous display windows that lend themselves to to these kinds of seasonal indulgences? While most of theses stores usually design their displays to entertain the whole family (and by that we mean kids), Two of them have always made a point of decorating with a little more sophistication. When Barneys was downtown on 17th Street and Seventh Avenue, then creative director Simon Doonan helped make the store's name with wickedly parodic windows that frequently skewered celebrities and events of the day. In recent years, Bergdorf Goodman has turned away from classic, holiday themes in favor of lavishly constructed fantasy themes that seem to get more intricate each year in its Fifth Avenue windows. Neither store has ever felt the need to offer something for everyone, and both know that their customers (many of whom they share) demand things that are just a bit different.

This year, Bergdorf's has picked a Jazz Age theme, "The BG Follies"for its five big Fifth Avenue windows this year. To a certain extent, the store and its Visual Director David Hoey generally take an "If it ain't broke don't fix it" attitude, using (and often re-using) design elements in abundance to make the most lavish display imaginable. Minimalist, they are not. In fact they are so crammed with objects and figures and decor that you could stare at them for hours, gazing at the lovingly crafted details. Pictured above is window #1, entitled "By Request", tribute of sorts to the all-girl band in Some Like It Hot. It makes use of a bird's-eye-view effect that has become something of a signature for the store. Repeating this element so often might seem a little less than original, but at this point, Bergdorf's Holiday windows are like a delicious cake that you only get to eat once a year. The familiarity is part of the pleasure. It would be disappointing if Naeem Khan didn't make a glittering custom designed gown for the windows as he has taken to doing in recent years, and this year he made two. Even better. You can see much better pictures than we could take of the rest of the windows at the store's blog 58th at Fifth HERE.

While Bergdorf's is sticking to its tradition, Barneys is in the protracted process of finding exactly what its image is going to be for the future. The management team that has directed the store for the past couple of years has tirelessly worked to remake nearly every aspect of the store's personality including a renovation of the flagship that seems timely on the one hand but also exceedingly ruthless on the other. The store's quirky but luxurious and sophisticated style ("Taste! Luxury! Humor!), honed over decades in great part by Mr. Doonan and a longstanding creative team, has been abandoned in favor of a slicker, more editorial point of view. Like a magazine, the store is now more likely to define itself by joining with other, unrelated personalities like Daphne Guinness, Carine Roitfeld and last year's Holiday promotion star, Lady Gaga. This time they went with Disney, collaborating on a heavily publicized short cartoon called Electric Holiday featuring Minnie Mouse dreaming herself into a Paris runway show and costarring a who's who of real life fashion figures (including Ms. Guinness, Gaga and Ms. Roitfeld among many others) transformed into Disney versions of themselves (watch it after the jump). There has been something of an outcry against Minnie Mouse's runway alter ego, who is stretched out to impossibly thin and out of character runway proportions to fit into her Lanvin dress, an effect that is bestowed on several other Disney figures thanks to an ill advised Tinkerbell and some fairy dust. It turns out that the complaints are justified. Despite composer Michael Giacchino's jazzy score, there is nothing less charming than seeing lively Disney characters sapped of their personalities as they clomp down a cartoon runway serving blank, state of the art runway model bitchface. The only one who looks at home is Cruella de Vil, so make of that what you will. Of course the other disappointment is that Barneys appears to have sunk their entire effort into this cartoon which means that instead of actual window displays, they have four big video screens on Madison Avenue playing the cartoon short. Walk into the store, and you would barely be able to tell that it is the Holiday season as well. Aside from a few not especially compelling light installations, what passes for Christmas decorations in the store is a mural sized black and white drawing of the celebrities who appear in the cartoon that is reproduced throughout the store. If you didn't know what it was, you would just think it was a big caricature drawing with nothing to do with the season. By contrast, Bergdorf's has repurposed it's interior decorations from last year, not uncommon among stores, or many homes, actually, but they are still arresting and evocative, featuring garlands of silver branches with swans and peacocks all over the store's already lavish main floor. There's no missing that the store is decorated for a special occasion.

So what we have one store that knows exactly who it is and finds a way to delight if not always surprise, and another that still hasn't managed to find a new direction that lives up to the original and unique on it has abandoned. Guess which one we are enjoying more?

See more of Bergdorf Goodman's windows HERE
Watch Barneys' Electric Holiday cartoon after the jump

AFTERMATH: Divided City

Yesterday, The Shophound took a stroll down Madison Avenue to Midtown just to get a sense of how the city's retailers were getting back up to speed. We were pleasantly surprised to see about 90% of the stores we passed open, even if it was just for limited hours. And they weren't just busy. they were bustling like it was a Holiday shopping day and not just a random Wednesday afternoon in the Fall. Clearly, there were lots of stranded tourists and New Yorkers unable to get to work who had some pent-up energy they were expending on shopping. That's great for the stores, who lost at least two full days of business due to the storm, (except for Barneys which, miraculously, was able to re-open on Tuesday afternoon). They need to recoup, and even Bergdorf Goodman (pictured above) happily opened its doors before its staff had time to remove the protective plywood from its windows. Reminders of the storm remained, most prominently the infamous One57 crane which kept its 57th Street block inaccessible and was conspicuously visible far down the gridlocked crosstown passage, but crowds weres storming the sidewalks.

Of course, downtown is a different story. Still without power, Chelsea, Union Square and below continue to be described as a ghost town. This city has always been able to delineate the difference between haves and have-nots in peculiarly vivid ways, but right now that distinction is not purely economic, aesthetic or social. It is simply, randomly,  geographical, for once. Hopefully, this won't last for more than a few days. When the power comes back on, everyone should head downtown to shop. Those stores will genuinely need as much support as they can get.

RETAIL RENEWAL: Bergdorf Goodman's Women's Store Is Festooned With Ribbons, But The Real News Is Inside The Men's Store

Bergdorf Goodman is probably the first department store to celebrate its 111th birthday with such fanfare. In fact it is probably the first anything to make such a big deal of an off-decade birthday. If you do the math, you can figure out that the company's centennial hit just around the time of September 11th, 2001, so any big celebrations for that Fall season were pretty much put of the question, and this year's number, 111, has an appealing, graphic quality, so why not celebrate now?

Much has been made of special commemorative items made for the store incorporating its signature lavender color, or in some cases the iconic ladies that, until recently, adorned the store's iconic shopping bags for many decades. They have also been revived for the elaborate decoration you see pictured above which presumably will be up for the season. The ladies briefly had male counterparts on a dark brown bag for the men's department that existed in the main store before the Men's Store opened 22 years ago, but those gentlemen have yet to make a reappearance. Still, It is in the men's store where the biggest changes have been happening at Bergdorf's.

Over the weekend, the store finally unveiled a completely redesigned third floor as well as a new Loro Piana shop and a dramatically expanded shoe "Library" on the main floor (Yes, we took some sneaky pictures, but none of them came out looking like anything we would be caught dead publishing, and Bergdorf's is not the kind of place like Macy's where you can walk around randomly photographing the store without being asked to leave, but WWD now has a thorough slideshow with more images like the ones at right and below HERE). Bits and pieces of the renovation have been revealed over the year, as new Lanvin and Prada shops were introduced earlier this year, and other parts were closed off and revealed over the Summer, but now the entire thing is open and ready for shopping. It is the first time since the Men's Store made its debut that such a drastic renovation has been undertaken on this side of Fifth Avenue. What was once a very soigné, Bergdorf-like series of rooms on the third floor has been fully gutted and remade. Gone is the well-liked but space-monopolizing café as well as the down escalator from 3 to 2, but in return the floor has been opened up to the formerly hidden windows allowing for much more natural light and an end to the classic, hermetically sealed "department store" ambiance.  Instead of the elegant neutral walls, the floor's base decor centers around rugged exposed brickwork and the nuts and bolts of a more industrial-style. It's definitely a new and a little bit unexpected look for the refined store, but it has been tempered with soft faux-skylights and parquet floors for a loft-like look. It provides the setting at either end of the floor for collections like Balmain, Maison Kitsuné, or Neil Barrett that are either too casual, or not yet developed enough to garner one of the individual shops that line the floor's center aisle, but the store's tradition of distinctive shops for each designer has not been abandoned. While the Prada, Dolce & Gabbana and Gucci shops have the expected, brand-approved look, there are also other striking new environments including a sleek, shiny Art Moderne home for Etro, a bold, laquered walled shop for Dries Van Noten and a Thom Browne environment in the luxurious shades of gray that are his signature. There is even a presciently planned, new Yves Saint Laurent shop that now feels almost like a place-holder for the next few months until the label's Hedi Slimane relaunch happens next season. Overall, the floor has been expanded dramatically, adding vendors and areas for denim and caselines for accessories and men's jewelry that weren't much of a consideration when the floor was laid out a couple of decades ago.

That's not the only big change in the store, however. The men's Shoe department Library has also been expanded and redesigned in a way that, not unlike Barney's new shoe area, combines the traditional and designer shoe offerings into a single comprehensive department allowing the store to increase its assortments of popular brands like Lanvin and Prada as well as add new labels like Tods and a resurgent Fratelli Rossetti to the mix. It is, however, more convenient and easily accessed than its chief competitor's new department a few block away, and feels even bigger. Our personal "librarian" promised us that in honor of the new renovations, vendors will have fully shipped the store for the season by the end of this week, a case we noticed on the third floor as well where labels like DSquared² and Michael Bastian, which will be filling the racks at other stores throughout the month, have also pushed deliveries of their full collections.

So if you haven's visited the Bergdorf Goodman Men's Store in a while, you won't even recognized half of it. We have it on good authority that most of the rest of the store will also be refreshed bit by bit over the course of the next year, to stay tuned for more transformation.

Bergdorf Goodman Men's Store 745 Fifth Avenue at 58th Street, Midtown
Previously:
Works In Progress: Half Of The New Third Floor At Bergdorf Goodman's Men's Store Is Now Finished

Bergdorf Goodman Completes Men's Store Renovation (WWD)

WORKS IN PROGRESS: Half Of The New Third Floor At Bergdorf Goodman's Men's Store Is Now Finished

First of all, let us say that The Shophound decided not to include a photo for this post not because we couldn't (we can almost always get a sneaky picture) but because only half of the third floor at Bergdorf Goodman's Men's Store has been finished, and it currently has a whole floor worth of goods crammed into it. It looks a little cluttery right now, and we thought a picture would be unfair, so we are holding off until the full reveal later in the year.

Having said that, We saw some pretty dramatic changes to the floor when we stopped by yesterday.  The designer collection level is getting its first extensive makeover since its opening 22 years ago, and the Fifth Avenue side of the floor has now been unveiled with a surprising new look. While the windows have been opened up, letting in the light and banishing the floor's previous, hermetically sealed atmosphere, the overall look of what has been finished is surprisingly dark, with heavy, oxidized metal details featuring lots of nuts and bolts.
Very butch.
There is more floor space and the scheme of having a series of compartmentalized departments lining a long corridor has been mostly abandoned in favor of a much more open floor plan.

The once popular restaurant is now gone, with a Dolce & Gabbana department in its place. There are new boutiques for Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent along with the Prada and Lanvin shops that debuted earlier this year. There is also a new, extended display counter for jewelry and small accessories as well as two very large steampunk-ish display cases devoted to Chrome Hearts. The dark, rugged details are not what we would have expected from Bergdorfs, which, even in its men's departments, has always erred on the side of beige-based refined elegance when it comes to store design. On the plus side, it is a very different look from the cool minimalism that characterizes the concurrent renovations a few blocks away at über-rival Barneys.

Right now, actually getting to the floor is the big challenge. Currently, it is closed off from the rotunda elevators to the eastern end, so the only way up there is by the Fifth Avenue elevators or the back staircase. We aren't sure when the rest of floor will be finished but we are guessing that it will be sometime before the Holiday Season begins, and its worth a look if you are anxious to catch a glimpse of what the future holds for one of New York's most prominent men's retailers.

HUMAN RESOURCES: Bergdorf Goodman Gets A New Boss

As a customer, you might not have known that Bergdorf Goodman has been without a president for about two years, as its previous chief, Jim Gold, has been overseeing the store from Dallas as president of specialty retail for the Neiman Marcus Group, the store's parent. Yesterday, however the company admitted that Bergdorf's really needs a more hands-on leader, so it named Joshua Schulman the store's president (pictured at left). It marks the first time that Bergdorf Goodman has been led by an executive whose experience comes from the wholesale side of the business. Schulman, whose most recent position was as CEO of Jimmy Choo lacks the traditional merchandising background one would expect from a retail CEO, but has decades of experience working with Bergdorf's as an executive with luxury brands like Jimmy Choo, Yves Saint Laurent and Gucci, where he was worldwide director of women’s ready-to-wear. It was there, ironically, where he oversaw the removal of Gucci women's apparel from Bergdorf's in 1999 when the label was displeased with the way the line was being presented in the store (By the way, having watched this happen with our own eyes, we can report it as a smart move on his part at the time. Gucci apparel returned after a hiatus of several seasons with a much larger department for women on the second floor).

Any gaps in the new President's experience will be covered by Gold, to whom he will report. “Although I’ve been a vendor, I’m not coming in with any preconceived notions. I will be working on a new strategic plan,” Schulman tells WWD, who suggests that strengthening management at Bergdorf's may be part of a larger strategy of preparing Neiman Marcus Group for a public offering.

Joshua Schulman Heading to Bergdorf Goodman by David Moin (WWD)

EXECUTIVE ACTION: Neiman's and Bergdorf's Name Matt Singer To Men's Fashion Post

Neiman Marcus Group filled a conspicuously empty menswear post today by naming Matthew Singer (pictured right) men's fashion director for both Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman stores. Name not familiar? A google image search shows that he's not quite the internet icon that his predecessor Nick Wooster has become, but he is apparently not quite the same kind of individualistic dresser, and coming from Bloomingdale's, he has had a relatively smaller position in the higher-end Men's market than he will have at Neiman's and Bergdorf's. Singer will be arriving at one of the country's largest and most influential men's luxury retailers in Neiman's, and one of it's most exclusive at Bergdorf's where he will help oversee a major renovation of the Men's Store that is already taking shape with a big new Lanvin boutique and the long awaited return of Prada with an even bigger one.

Singer has been appointed just in time for the Fall 2012 Men's shows in Milan and Paris which begin next week. That should give him just enough of a chance to get a few flashy new duds so Tommy Ton and all the other street photogs can learn his name.

Neiman Marcus Names Matthew Singer Men’s Fashion Director (WWD)

LUXURY DOG RUN: A Canine Crew Cavorts Through Bergdorf Goodman

It's no longer enough to produce lavish window displays and a Holiday advertising campaign. Stores must operate on all media channels to compete for business, hence, we have "Unleashed", Bergdorf Goodman's Holiday Video embedded above. Cleverly tying in to the store's "Carnival of the Animals" theme, the video shows the elegant store overrun by a pack of wild dogs... or, well, maybe just a group Upper East Side house pets.

Still, there's something strangely mesmerizing about watching this play group frolicing throughout the the store, and the video promotes not only the legendary retailer but also the Humane Society of New York with a sweet subplot (can a four-minute video have a subplot?) about Bergdorf's iconic doorman and pet adoption. If Christmas shopping at Bergdorf Goodman is just a bit out of your reach, then adopting a pet in need of a loving home may be a worthy alternative.

Previously:
The Window Watcher: Bergdorf Goodman Unleashes A Holiday Menagerie