Earlier this week, WWD reported on the unveiling of the newly revamped Co-op floor at the Madison Avenue flagship of Barneys New York. While the full floor will not be unveiled until later this week, naturally, The Shophound couldn't wait that long, so we made our way to Madison Avenue and found most of the floor completed and open for business. Part of the women's section and the new restaurant @Genes were not yet open, but we felt we had enough to go on to get a general feeling of the floor. Not really a great feeling, as it turned out.
We know that, at times, The Shophound has breathlessly reported on other store renovations and expansions almost like a press agent. That's mainly because we always appreciate it when a retailer recognizes that it's time to update and refresh. Usually, such changes are made thoughtfully, with a clear understanding of a store's business and where its executives want to take it. Take the recent renovations of the designer floor at Saks Fifth Avenue or Bloomingdale's Men's Department, both long overdue, for example. They took areas of the stores that had become moribund, or at the very least a little stale, and remade them to maximize their potential.
Why is it, then, that we can't get excited about the changes at Barneys? We have already expressed our misgivings about management's decision to wipe away architect Peter Marino's elegant main floor design from the store's 1992 opening in favor of what appears to be a colder, flashier minimalist look that continues to unfold. We fear we may have seen the last of the ersatz Romanesque mosaic and iconic fish tank that lived in a section of the floor that is currently closed off.
Now the Co-op, one of the company's key profit centers, is being remade. Make no mistake, we would agree that some updating was in order for this department, particularly in the men's section which, at Madison Avenue, had become crowded and overly cluttered no matter how many configurations of racks and shelves the managers tried in order to make the floor easier to shop. The Co-op, however was one of the floors we frequented most at Barneys, mostly because it was the one where we would have been most likely to be able to buy something. As the sportiest, most casual floor, it was perfect for entry level at a store that we all know can often out-price even the more extravagant shoppers among us. As the youngest floor, it was also typically the most whimsical in a store known for its irreverence and quirky humor.
Not anymore.
Let's start with what we like, the floor. The actual floor we walked on was made of what has been referred to as marble mosaic which is actually composed of strips of roughly finished marble aggregated into larger slabs creating an unusual texture that we could actually feel through our shoes. It felt kind of cool and looked great.
Let's see... what else did we like.....
Not so much else, as it turned out. When we emerged from the escalator at the eighth floor where the men's Co-op has been moved to align it with the women's counterpart, we saw a mass of racks zigzagging across the floor. Initially, we thought that the department hadn't been fully merchandised, and they were still moving goods up from the fifth floor, but it turns out that the racks have purposely been arranged in a jagged, disorienting maze. Adding to the confusion is that where the department's various brands were once identified by prominent signs affixed to the racks, they were now denoted by far subtler indicators placed below the tops of the racks. This idea was more successful on the women's side, where brighter, more elaborate clothes made differentiation easier, but in the men's section, it merely created a monotonous sea of mostly gray and black garments (see below). We might also mention that joining the men's and women's Co-ops undermines Barneys' original intrinsic concept of two separate but side-by side stores for men and women that has its roots in the original 17th Street location. While the women's side stays in its same location, moving the men's to the top floor disrupts the flow of the men's floors which once had the men's sportswear and designer collection floors logically clustered together from the second to the fifth floors.
Barney's chose the design firm Yabu Pushelberg for the job of re-imagining the Co-op. They are no slouches, and may be best known among New York's shoppers for the thoughtful and lavish refurbishment of the main floor at Bergdorf Goodman's women's store, and the creation of its lower level cosmetics department. Their co-op, however is starkly minimal, following the direction Barneys' current management. WWD's article makes it clear that Simon Doonan, currently the store's "Creative Ambassador" who in the past had a lot to do with creating its signature whimsy and humor, now has nothing whatsoever to do with its creative direction anymore. The world's most celebrated window dresser has, ironically, become window dressing himself, trotted out for press purposes to create a symbolic link to the store's past, and his unique sensibility, once most evident in the Co-op, is nowhere to be seen. It's all serious up there, as if the class clown, who is sometimes also the smartest one, has been permanently expelled.
What bothers us most about the new Barneys isn't just that things are changing. Frankly, a leading edge store like Barneys should always be in a constant state of updating and changing to keep itself fresh for its customers who demand the newest and most exciting merchandise. We have always admired Barneys for that very quality, even when we worked for one of its fiercest rivals, and we had been impressed by the way the store maintained the consistency of its brand even among the turmoil and rapid ownership changes it underwent over the past 15 years or so. We don't think that what is going on there is anywhere near as bad as what happened to the pathetic shell of a once great retailer that insists on continuing to call itself Henri Bendel. Barneys has not been without its own merchandising challenges that needed solutions, particularly in some of its branch stores in other parts of the country that weren't as well received as had been expected. However, in seeing the store being "re-invented" we are starting to wonder if its new team can tell exactly what it is that customers have continued to love about the store and its distinctive personality. This is, after all what sets it apart in a market like New York with lots of competitors who carry the same merchandise. Watching it change, we can't feeling like we are seeing the baby that is Barneys slowly get thrown out with the bathwater.
Barneys Unveils Co-op's New Look By Jessica Iredale (WWD)
