The Shophound

PLAN AHEAD: A Pop-Up Store For Michael Bastian Is Set For This November

You can make your Fall shopping plans early this year. The BOFFO Building Fashion program took a hiatus last year, but it will be making a welcome return this Fall with three new shops starting with one for menswear designer Michael Bastian. The new 640-square-foot shop will run for three weeks this November. The program teams up fashion designers with innovative architectural settings, and in the past has staged installations for Simon Spurr, Nicola Formichetti, Siki Im and Patrik Ervell to name a few. Boffo is accepting submissions through May 23rd at Architizer.com for a competition to design an interior for Bastian's shop which will be housed in two shipping containers at Pier 57 in Chelsea. The winner will receive a $20,000 prize on top of whatever resources they will need to execute the interior. There will also be upcoming shops for one womenswear designer and one accessories designer who are yet to be announced.

As for Bastian, he now designs his own signature label as well as the popular, ongoing  Gant by Michael Bastian collaboration collection so he should have more than enough product to fill the shop and draw customers to it. Reportedly, offerings will include exclusive runway pieces from his Fall 2013 collection (pictured at left) that will not be available at other retailers. WWD reports that this project will serve as a precursor of sorts to his own permanent shop which he is actively planning. Bastian is a rare designer who also has an extensive background in retailing, so when he finally opens his permanent showplace, we can reasonably expect something impressive. Stay tuned for more details as they are released.

Michael Bastian Goes BOFFO (WWD)
BOFFO Building Fashion (Official Site)
Submit proposals at Architizer.com
Michael Bastian (Official Site)

WAREHOUSE RELOCATION: Barneys Warehouse Sale To Officially Move To Metropolitan Pavilion —But Why Bother?

Yesterday marked the end the last Barneys Warehouse Sale in its traditional Chelsea location, and the retailer took the opportunity to officially confirm to shoppers what The Shophound has predicted: that the sale would relocate to the Metropolitan Pavilion a couple blocks East on 18th Street. Of course, having seen the pitiful selection of merchandise that was left even by the time the sale was halfway over, we have wonder if it is worth holding the live, walk-in version of the sale at all?

One has to remember that when the Warehouse Sale originally created, Barneys was more of a local destination on the corner of Seventh Avenue and Seventeenth Street (now the homes of Loehmann's and the Rubin Museum of Art), and holding on off-site sale was a great way to clear out inventory from the previous season while devoting the main store's limited floor space to current, full price merchandise. Since then, however the retailer has expanded, added a whole network of 13 outlet stores and, just this season, created an ongoing Barneys Warehouse website that will be open all the time.

Much like the Academy Awards, the Barneys Warehouse Sale has always given shoppers something to criticize and complain about, but regular customers will probably be able to point to incredible designer deals in their closets that they never could have been able to afford if they hadn't found them at the sale -usually during it's last days when additional discounts can reach up to 50% and 60% off the lowest ticket price. We certainly have a few, but there hardly any such items this time when the sale's offerings were dramatically diminished from the first day. Most of the designer items for men and women were reserved for the website, where many of them are still available but without any additional reductions from their final clearance prices in Barneys' stores. Who knows when, if ever, they will be re-reduced?

So, at this point, with outlets and a full-time off-price clearance e-commerce site why do they even need do do theses sales at all? In fairness, it's more profitable for the store to sell clearance items online in an ongoing manner without slashing prices so dramatically, so we can't blame them for creating what is really an off-price e-commerce site that should compete with the likes of Bluefly or Yoox. Next season, they have already given notice that the sale would focus only on men's tailored clothing and dress furnishings, but if the reduced selection we saw last week is any indication of what we can expect -and much of it felt like we had already seen it at previous Warehouse Sales- then we don't see why Barneys should even bother continuing with it at all. As we said when we reviewed this sale's first day offerings, The Warehouse Sale that we knew and loved is finished. Let's let it go.

Barneys Warehouse Sale (Official Site)
Previously:
Warehouse Report: About the Sad Excuse For A Barneys Warehouse Sale That Opened Yesterday

WAREHOUSE UPDATE: Additional Reductions At Barneys Warehouse Sale

The Shophound really didn't think we would bother checking back at the disappointing Barney's Warehouse Sale, but since we were walking past it yesterday, we checked to see how things were progressing. The first additional reductions have been posted including an extra 25% off on selected categories like men's dress shirts and Women's shoes among others. From what we can tell, there will be no additional merchandise added to the racks, as they looked substantially less full than they did last Thursday. The men's department is even drearier with whole sections of the space completely empty and closed off. Still, if you wear an XL or larger, there is an abundance of blue-star sport shirts at an extra 75% off the lowest ticket price, so for the right person, a remarkable bargain ma still be waiting for you —just keep expectations low.

Click on the image at left for a complete list of yesterday's additional markdowns.

Barney's Warehouse Sale Through February 24th at 255 West 17th Street between 7th & 8th Avenues, Chelsea

FASHION EXHIBITIONS: FIT Shows Off Its Shoe Fetish

It has been a little while since The Shophound has posted about FIT's fashion exhibitions, and it's only because of oversight on our part. Their shows are always interesting, easily accessible and best of all, free. The latest, Shoe Obsession, opened just over a week ago and focuses in the extraordinary explosion in inventive shoe design since the 21st Century began and the collective fascination with increasingly elaborate footwear. As these things go, it is fairly straightforward, with the main point being: Wow, shoes are crazy these days.

So it turns out not to be the most scholarly of FIT's shows, but what it lacks in depth it more than makes up for in spectacle because, wow, shoes are crazy these days. The exhibition is simply designed with a matrix of cases featuring shoes arranged by theme, designer, or in a few cases, collector thanks to Lynn Ban and Daphne Guinness, whose particular fashion excesses continue to provide rich material for this museum, and probably several others. Since the show focuses on the post-"Sex and the City" era (and features at least two styles from Manolo Blahnik which were explicitly featured in the show and it's film sequel) you won't see any extravagant designs from the past from designers like Maud Frizon and Walter Steiger who were iconic and influential in their heydays. There are, however plenty of recent looks from nearly every significant shoe designer you have heard of and a few obscure ones you probably haven't. Visitors will also find some particularly extreme, virtually unwearable examples by way of, who else, Lady GaGa. Though there is little discussion about the deeper meanings of the hobbling effects of such extreme footwear  Shoe Obsession is still an entertaining survey of exactly how inventive/crazy shoes have become since the advent of Carrie Bradshaw & Co. It's fast, fun and occasionally bewildering.

And while you are at FIT, you should take a few extra minutes to check out the smaller but not unrelated exhibit Fashion and Technology on view in the Fashion & Textile History Gallery on the museum's street level. it traces all sorts of technological innovations that make most of the clothes you wear today possible, including most of the shoes in the other exhibition downstairs.

Shoe Obsession through April 13 and Fashion and Technology through May 8 at The Museum at FIT, Seventh Avenue at 27 Street, Chelsea

WAREHOUSE REPORT: About the Sad Excuse For A Barneys Warehouse Sale That Opened Yesterday

A lot of New York shoppers may be thinking that the next week will be their last chance to catch one more opportunity to shop the Barneys Warehouse Sale that has been a seasonal bargain resource for years.

Well, unfortunately for them, that would have been last Fall. The sale that opened up yesterday in the longtime Chelsea space that Barneys will soon be turned out of is so diminished that The Shophound wonders why they bothered holding it at all. A lot of us have been wondering if the new online Barneys Warehoue site would have an impact on the amount and quality of the merchandise made available at the final sale in its traditional location, and the answer is yes to both concerns. Clearly, and in fairness, smartly, the retailer has reserved the best items to sell online. What is left for this sale is a pretty pitiful selection of goods that didn't make the cut. In terms of sheer volume, there appears to be about half the amount of merchandise available as we have come to expect from this event, which is why the sale seems strangely spacious. Women's apparel, the main draw, is now arranged only by category rather than designer, which suggests that the designer selection is fairly light at best. The women's shoe racks appeared reduced in numbers to us, and it was difficult for us to tell how much of the merchandise was from this past fall or previous seasons. There is virtually nothing from the Chelsea passage home department except for some stacks of coffee table books which regulars will recognize as leftovers from last season's sale. Women's accessories are similarly sparse, and the whole thing seems conspicuously meager.

Downstairs in the men's department is where you can really see how the event has been cut back. Men's tailored clothing has been reduced in space by at least half, as have dress shirts and furnishings, but not socks and hats. For some mysterious reason, there are bins and bins of socks and hats —more than we have seen before— but that hardly makes up for the sad shoe selection. It has been stripped of any of the desirable brands Barneys is known for in favor of some dodgy looking private label merchandise, and a few tough-sells from high profile labels

The second basement section, usually devoted to sportswear, is now reserved for merchandise from previous seasons with blue-star stamped tags. This may be the only opportunity for a real bargain, since it is all being sold for 75% off the lowest ticket price. It is mostly aged merchandise, so what is available is definitely hit or miss, and some sizes are barely represented. There is a much smaller blue-star section upstairs on the women's floor as well, and both departments offer an orange tag area featuring none too appealing priced-as-marked goods that appear to be damaged or otherwise altered in some way.

Overall, the entire sale is a disappointment, and just seems depressing. As usual, nothing has yet been reduced beyond its most recent ticket price, but we're not sure that you would want it even if it were marked down further. The sale that we all knew and looked forward to is now long gone. We have been told that next season, a new sale will be held focusing on menswear, but if this is any suggestion of what we can expect from future sales, then we don't see the point in continuing with the walk-in sales at all. Put it all online or send it to the outlet stores. The old Barneys Warehouse Sale is dead. Let it rest in piece.

Barney's Warehouse Sale Through February 24th at 255 West 17th Street between 7th & 8th Avenues, Chelsea

 

WAREHOUSE UPDATE: Barneys Warehouse Sale Opens On Thursday —No Additional Markdowns Online

Oh, Barney's Warehouse Sale! We never know what to expect from you anymore.
The final sale at its regular location starts on Thursday, so this may be the last time, particularly for women, to stand in line on 17th Street and shop in a basement through a frenzied crush of crammed racks for the luxury store's final markdowns. That never sounds incredibly appealing, and yet it draws us back season after season. Somehow, there's always something there to tempt us and, obviously, plenty of other people.

Around this time last season, Barneys tested out an online Warehouse Sale for the first time which ended just as the regular sale began, and like its non-virtual counterpart, offered deep discounts just before it closed up. This year however, the Warehouse website will remain open permanently, and, unfortunately, we can find no such discounts this time around. How the online Warehouse Sale will handle re-reductions remains to be seen, but at the moment, everything seems to remain in the same 50% to 75% off zone as when the site launched a few weeks ago.

So get ready. Thursday starts your last opportunity to enjoy the Warehoue Sale you have come to know and love. We will try to stop by and check up on tings as we always do. Next season it will be a mostly (if not exclusively) Men's clothing affair in a Chelsea location yet to be officially anounced. Stay tuned for updates.

Barney's Warehouse Sale February 14th -24th at 255 West 17th Street between 7th & 8th Avenues, Chelsea
Click image above to enlarge full details.

WAREHOUSE FLASH: Barneys Next Warehouse Sale Starts On Valentine's Day

It will be a bittersweet Valentine's Day next month when Barneys kicks off its final Warehouse Sale in what will soon no longer be the Chelsea Co-op store. Our friends at Racked have been speculating that this may be the last Warehouse Sale ever. We hate to step on anyone's spin, but we are pretty sure that yesterday's WWD article that confirmed the closure of the Chelsea location was pretty specific that after next month's sale, another one was planned "in a new location one block away in August or September".
So, let's all just take a deep breath and stop worrying if the seasonal sale will continue, and start speculating about where it will continue. That's more fun anyway, right? Metropolitan Pavilion? Some other warehouse space in Chelsea? Who knows?

So far, we have no official word on whether the store will repeat the online component of the sale from last season which ran in advance of the traditional event. Followers will remember that prices were reduced at periodic intervals online in the same way they do at the main sale, and saved shoppers a lot of standing in line and uncivilized elbow checks. So far, Barneys' own Warehouse Sale site has not yet been updated, so we don't have complete dates, but, as always, we will keep watching.

*SALE HUNT* Barneys Warehouse Sale (Mizhattan)
The Barneys Warehouse Sale Has a Date (But Will It Be the Last?) (Racked)
Barneys Warehouse Sale (Official Site)
Previously:
Coming & Going: Barneys Co-op Officially Closing In Chelsea, But A Downtown Flagship Could Be In the Works

COMING & GOING: Barneys Co-op Officially Closing In Chelsea, But A Downtown Flagship Could Be In the Works

As Barneys confirms that its Co-op store in Chelsea, its first outside a flagship store, will be closing after next month's Warehouse Sale, the retailer also reveals that it is actively looking for all sorts of retail opportunities in downtown Manhattan including a perennially rumored second Manhattan flagship location. According to today's WWD, a multitude of options are up in the air concerning Barneys' retail plans for New York. The Co-op on West 18th Street will close not because it is underperforming but because the lease is up and the landlord is planing extensive renovations that will require all tenants to vacate. The upcoming Warehouse Sale (no official dates yet) will be the last in the location, but it is expected to continue on in another location nearby in August or September.

What happens next remains a big question. The store's official statement to WWD is,

“While we have no immediate plans to replace the Chelsea store downtown, we believe that there remains significant opportunity for Barneys in downtown Manhattan to replace and expand upon this store closing, and our historic business, and are continuing to look at multiple real estate options for the medium to long term,”

—which could mean almost anything. A full flagship, including a Co-op department would require at least 100,000 square feet, and probably more to make the kind of statement New Yorkers expect from Barneys, which is not especially easy to find anywhere in Manhattan let alone in the kind of shopping neighborhoods where one expects to find a luxury store. A Co-op might be easier to place, and more of a priority, since this closing leaves the SoHo Co-op as the only one downtown, and that location does not include Men's apparel at all, as the Chelsea unit did.

Barneys has been in retrenchment mode over the past couple of years, shedding underperforming branch stores in both the flagship and Co-op divisions, but it remains successful in big cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. A new Manhattan store could strengthen the chain in a market where it already has an established customer base and brand loyalty —the question is exactly where it would be? It's worth noting that Barneys had established itself as a tony store on Seventh Avenue and 17th Street during the 1970s and 80s, a time when Chelsea was not yet seen as a particularly luxurious or desirable neighborhood. In fact, the store played a major role in Chelsea's gentrification. Is Barneys still daring enough to once again become a single destination in a less glamorous part of downtown Manhattan (if there are any left) or has corporate ownership made it more cautious and conservative? Hopefully, we'll find out before Chelsea has to go for too long without one of its most popular stores —and most convenient and reliably decent rest rooms.

Barneys New York Looking for Downtown Flagship? By Sharon Edelson (WWD)

RUMOR MILL: Is Barneys' Co-op In Chelsea Ready To Pack It In?

Is it the end for Barney's Co-op in Chelsea? The New York Post and Racked are reporting on rumors that once this season's warehouse sale is over, the branch will not re-open to resume its normal activity as it has in season's past. Of course these speculations have been followed by trails of comments on Racked from those who claim to have known this for months, but rumors about Barneys have been unreliable in general in recent years, including some which emphatically insisting that the Warehouse Sale was being phased out, or that there were imminent plans for a new, full line Barneys store in the Meatpacking District.

What happens to the Chelsea Co-op remains to be seen. If our memory serves, it was the first location opened when Barneys decided to expand the Co-op brand from its denim and contemporary departments to its own offshoot chain. At the time, it was heralded as a return to Chelsea for the retailer which only a few years earlier was forced to close its original flagship store about a block away at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Seventeenth Street. Since then, it may have been eclipsed by a busier women's only units in SoHo, and an expansive two-level version in Cobble Hill, but it has always seemed to serve its sophisticated Chelsea and West Village clients well despite having to shut down for weeks at a time to host the Warehouse sale.
Barney's current management has not shown themselves to be particularly sentimental about the store's past, so it is not entirely unbelievable that the store might be shuttered, but that would leave a few questions such as: Would it be moved to a newer, more favorable location like the nearby Meatpacking District? What would happen to the Warehouse Sale? Would it move to a better location with more room, and would it still have such a conveniently accessible rest room?

The Warehouse Sale typically happens about a month from now —in fact, an announcement should be coming any day now. As for the fate of the Chelsea store, Barneys management isn't commenting. Make of that what you will.

A thread thrashin’ (NYPost second item via Racked)

RETURN ENGAGEMENTS: The Pop-Up Flea Returns This Weekend

One of The Shophound's favorite pop-up events reappears this weekend. The Pop-Up Flea will stage it's fifth edition starting tomorrow afternoon through Sunday, this time at Chelsea's Drive-In studios. Produced by popular blogger and brand consultant Michael Williams of A Continuous Lean and Urban Daddy's Randy Goldberg, it has become an annual shopping bonanza for Heritage brands and younger, artisanal labels which aspire to similar authenticity, and also a symbol of the continuing and strangely paradoxical trendiness of well-worn classics, the more old and busted up, the better. This year's mix of visiting vendors includes regulars like Gitman Brothers, Tellason and Tanner Goods, bigger brands like L.L.Bean Signature, and new additions as well. Click the image above to enlarge the full roster. One of our favorite stores, California's Unionmade will be representing, and Levi's Vintage Clothing is promising a major display of motorcycle jackets and other biker gear and memorabilia from the archives of photographer Danny Lyon.

Expect to see a lot of guys with various iterations of hipster facial hair, an abundance of plaid flannel, and no shortage of men shod in well worn longwing brogues or work boots with white Vibram soles.

The Pop-Up Flea starts Friday November 30th at Drive-In Studios, 443 W 18th Street between 9th & 10th Avenues, Chelsea