The Shophound

THE WINDOW WATCHER: Lord & Taylor Gives Us A Holiday Sneak Peek

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Lord & Taylor will unveil its famous Holiday windows this Monday, November 15^th, but yesterday, The Shophound got a rare sneak peek at one of the windows that the store's visual team has been working furiously to prepare for next weeks debut. We were ushered downstairs to the workshop (part of which is actually underneath Fifth Avenue) and allowed to view one nearly finished window as it was being assembled in the store's unique hydraulic lift system, a small, officially sanctioned portion of which is pictured above.

This year, Vice President of Visual Merchandising Scott Devine and his team broke from tradition just a bit. Instead of dreaming up another nostalgic Victorian-era theme, they turned to the Lord & Taylor's Facebook fans and asked for stories about their holiday memories. After sifting through a torrent of response, favorites were chosen and incorporated into the store's Holiday window designs titled "Share The Joy". Nine months in the making (just like a baby), the windows will stand out this year by including more modern scenes and contemporary families, but still framed with the store's beloved, animated Holiday flair.

Monday's unveiling extravaganza will be an all-day affair with special appearances from Candy Queen Dylan Lauren, her almost in-law FEED Projects co-founder Lauren Bush and restaurateur Sarabeth Levine, culminating at 5:30 PM with a performance by The Young People's Chorus of New York City featuring Emmy and Tony winning "Promise, Promises" star Kristin Chenoweth. We would totally go out of our way for a free Cheno appearance, and she will sing a specially composed song for the occasion.

If that's not enough to get you to 39^th and Fifth on Monday, then you might consider that the store will be offering $5 tickets that will get you a 20% savings on any single item as well as a 15% savings pass on nearly everything in the store including the cosmetics and fragrances that are always excluded from these kinds of offers. Ticket proceeds will go to the American Red Cross in Greater New York, so you're really kind of a stingy ogre if you don't go, aren't you? Something to think about while you are calculating your savings on a Chanel lipstick.

Lord & Taylor Holiday Windows debut November 15^th at 424 Fifth Avenue Between 38^th & 39^th Streets

RENOVATIONS & REVIVALS: Lord & Taylor To Revive Its Home Department

There's been no official announcement from the store, but WWD reports today that home furnishings vendors have begun taking orders from Lord & Taylor, which hasn't sold such items in about 20 years. The report says that as a part of the store's long overdue renovations on Fifth Avenue, the ninth floor will now be the Home floor, anchored by Ralph Lauren's Lauren and Calvin Klein's White Label lines. Other brands will probably be added as well (especially since focusing on just those two wouldn't leave much differentiation from Macy's and Bloomingdale's where they are already featured heavily).

There has been much speculation about the final configuration of Lord & Taylor's venerable flagship, which at one point included the possibility of downsizing and closing some floors to selling, but if they are stocking the store all the way up to the ninth floor, it looks more like they are capitalizing on more efficient use of space by adding potentially lucrative departments. You'll find no complaints here. For now, the revived department will be limited to the Fifth Avenue store, but if successful, will likely be rolled out to appropriate locations in the rest of the chain.

Fashion Scoops: L&T's New Home (WWD)

The Window Watcher: Are Lord & Taylor's Holiday Windows Just A Bit Too Old Fashioned?

Perhaps no store has a more consistent style of Holiday windows than Lord & Taylor. Year after year, their displays are always intricate and meticulously detailed with lots of moving parts, usually including lots of figures in typically nostalgic holiday scenes. Of all the major windows, these are easily the most kinetic, sometimes featuring two or three different animations in a single window. This year, instead of featuring a story, the theme is, "What We Love", and if that sounds vague, it would explain the random combinations of Christmas-y vignettes featuring seemingly unrelated figures, often from totally different time frames, jumbled together. Here's a gingerbread house, there's a carousel and there's some skaters. One window seems to reference "The Nutcracker"...or maybe not. None of this seems to matter too much to all the little kids lined up to gaze, enthralled, at the many scenes of happy white folks celebrating.
Oh, wait a minute.
There's that.
Yes, all those figures do seem a bit more homogeneous than necessary. On closer inspection, we did find a very few caramel colored figures spinning in the upper reaches of two windows (left), but we couldn't really tell if they were meant to represent another race's complexion or just suntans. Nevertheless, we certainly hope that when planning next year's windows, they are able to inject a bit more diversity into the displays.
Lord & Taylor 424 Fifth Avenue between 38th & 39th Streets, Midtown.

Click HERE for a slideshow featuring a closer look at the windows.

Paring Down:Fortunoff Back On The Block

Don't look for a Fortunoff jewelry department to appear in a Lord & Taylor near you anytime soon.
Parent company NRDC had originally planned to combine the synergies of its two assets in just such a manner, but today, WWD reports that the Long Island based chain is up for sale. NRDC, like many diversified companies, is paring away extraneous investment to focus on core brands, a category that Fortunoff, unfortunately, did not quite qualify for.
Reportedly, Lord & Taylor is negotiating with the current opertor of its leased jewelry departments to extend the agreement, leaving Fortunoff with diminished opportunity for expansion.
NRDC in Talks to Sell Fortunoff (WWD)

Today In Retail ShakeupsLord & Taylor DoesThe Executive Shuffle

Change is afoot at Lord & Taylor.
President and CEO Jane Elfers is set to be replaced by NM Direct President Brendan Hoffman as parent company Hudson's Bay Trading Co. exerts more management control over its newly organized divisions. The Bay was acquired  last July by L&T's parent NRDC Equity Partners who is reorganizing its retail properties under the aegis of the venerable Canadian chain. Lord & Taylor will now fall under the purview of Jeffrey Sherman, CEO of HBTC, who is said to be taking a more direct role in management of all the chains.
That leaves Elfers out of the picture, despite the much admired job she has done, first in distinguishing Lord & Taylor from its more moderate siblings as part of the May Company, and later upgrading the store's image and assortments in efforts to escape its reputation as a staid, promotional department store.
There is still plenty of work to be done at Lord & Taylor, not the least of which includes a much discussed renovation and reconfiguration of the chain's Fifth Avenue flagship.
Let's hope that the new organization will complete L&T's much anticipated turnaround smoothly.
Elfers, Weikel Are Out at Lord & Taylor (DNR)

Restaurant Swap at Lord & Taylor:In With Sarabeth's - Out With An American Place

The folks at Lord & Taylor continue to make savvy decisions regarding the revival of their historic Fifth Avenue flagship store. While, to The Shophound, eating at Lord & Taylor will always conjure up images of The Bird Cage (the restaurant, not the movie) with it's elaborate decor of cages and exotic stuffed birds and a fluffy coconut cake for dessert, in recent years the culinary role has been filled by celebrated chef Larry Forgione and his signature restaurant, An American Place. Recognizing that Forgione may have been getting lost in the vast department store, The New York Times tells us that his restaurants will soon be replaced with one of New Yorkers' favorite restaurant chains, Sarabeth's Kitchen. So far, there is no word on the resilient Mr. Forgione's future plans.
We couldn't possibly think of a better way to drive repeat traffic down to Lord & Taylor. Sarabeth's is now poised to go national as they will replace restaurants in other L&T branches over the next two years.
Off the Menu (NYTimes, 8^th item)

Lord & Taylor Returns To Home Furnishings

Lord & Taylor has announced a plan for the overhaul of its historic Fifth Avenue flagship. Chairman of  L&T and now Fortunoff parent NRDC Equity Partners, Richard Baker announced plans to convert two floors into  a home department. Most had speculated that the flagship would be downsized with the vacated floors being turned to office space, however, the recent acquisition of Fortunoff now gives the chain easy entrée into a business it abandoned decades ago, and allows it to compete on a more even field with Bloomingdale's and Macy's.
In addition, Fortunoff will also take over Lord & Taylor's leased jewelry departments this February when their current operator's contract expires. We're not sure if any of these new departments will be co-branded with Fortunoff. While NRDC would probably love to have that kind of exposure for their new but troubled acquisition, we tend to think that L&T would be far better off as brand if the lease arrangements remained invisible to customers.
It's really all up to Baker and Jane Elfers, the chain's president and CEO. Fortunoff's home furnishings departments are to be tested in suburban Lord & Taylor branches before they are implemented in Manhattan, but we are really looking forward to see how the main store finally gets re-configured. There's no store in the city that needs it more.
L&T Considers International Growth, Fifth Ave. Flagship Renovation (WWD)

Collaboration Update: Bryan Bradley at Lord & Taylor

After we hit BCBG over the weekend, we figured we would walk a block or two south and see how the revival of Lord & Taylor was coming along, particularly to see how Tuleh designer Bryan Bradley's exclusive collection for the store had turned out. All we could find of the line, called Bryan by Bryan Bradley, was the chiffon trimmed knit cardigan and dress ensemble pictured above which totaled about $500 for both piece. In a Tuleh-ish sort of way, it could look winsome and feminine on the right lady and prim and schoolmarmish on the wrong one.
That was it. Not much to judge from.
Either everything else was sold out or they are starting slow. We could find nothing of the line on the store's website, so perhaps they are shooting to launch it big for Holiday.
As for the rest of the store, most of their other big initiatives have yet to be implemented, although they have clearly made an effort to reduce clutter on the sales floor and upgrade their displays and visual merchandising. A mobbed women's shoe department proved that the store could still attract a crowd, but the remodeling and renovation the building desperately needs have not yet begun. We will be keeping an eye on them, however. This is one turnaround that the entire fashion industry is rooting for.
Previously: Lord & Taylor Signs Tuleh's Bryan Bradley and Starts Looking Interesting

Look to Fall for Lord & Taylor's Rebirth

WWD reports that all of Lord & Taylor's heavy rebranding and remerchandising initiatives will start to take effect for the Fall and Holiday seasons this year. Store results have been improving and new efforts to build a contemporary business have been successful, so this Fall will see the full launches of in-house collections from Tuleh's Bryan Bradley and Cynthia Steffe as well as a dramatic increase in other exclusive items throughout the store. New owners NRDC Equity Partners will launch refreshed advertising, shopping bags, and even credit card designs. The Shophound is rooting for the iconic store to prove all the naysayers wrong who had pronounced the store near death. No word yet on renovations and reconfigurations for the Fifth Avenue flagship, but we expect they will follow soon.
L&T's Fall Season Seen Key To Store's Revamp (WWD)
Lord & Taylor (official site)

Alex K Goes Shopping: A Visit to Siberia Edition

Frankly, we're a little tired of Alex Kuczynski these days having seen her make two visits to the Today show within a weeks time to promote her new book Beauty Junkies. Why does her upper face seem so suspiciously immobile and shiny as she proudly proclaims herself to be Botox-free? And we're not sure what kind of points she thinks she deserves for returning to her natural hair color, a rich chestnut brown which even a 39-year old woman can usually only find with the help of a good colorist, and giving up nail polish, which is hardly the sort of willing self-mutilation that leads to a face like Jocelyne Wildenstein's, a Tara Reid plastic surgery nightmare media tour, or accidental death during face-lift surgery. We'll believe her when she stops shaving her legs and bleaching her mustache.
But back to today's Thursday Styles, and Alex's visit to Lord & Taylor.
Sadly, this week's report is missing the sort of bizarro reveries like last weeks kindergarten story, we are only treated to a sixteen year old memory of a woman who referred to B. Altman as Baltman's. It's hard to imagine anyone in Kuczynski's circle would be that ignorant, but it's a relatively minor infraction.