Barneys: Is It Cool To Be Cruel?

In Slate, Dan Gross looks at the history of Barneys -- from bankruptcy in 1996 to its status as target of a bidding war between potential purchasers from Dubai and Japan (which has put the value of Barneys at close to $1 billion) -- and concludes that Barneys past problems weren't mismanagement, but that the concept of Barneys as a nationwide chain serving avant garde luxury consumers, was simply ahead of its time. (He also manages to write one of those sentences I wish I'd written:)

My money's on the Dubai bidders. Barneys specializes in dressing well-heeled Jewish women from the Upper East Side from head to toe in black. Dubai specializes in dressing well-heeled Muslim women from the Middle East from head to toe in black.

Gene Pressman, the man responsible for creating that vision for Barneys back in the 1980s has recently co-authored a book: Chasing Cool. In it he and Noah Kerner interview cool people including Tom Ford, Russell Simmons and Jack Demsey from Estee Lauder about where cool comes from (hint: it's internal, it's not something you can buy. Demsey said: "I love looking at trend reports because then I know exactly what I shouldn't be doing".) Pressman also talked about how after his father had signed Giorgio Armani to an exclusive, it took years for the brand to make any money to make any money. Of course, they stuck it out and it paid off.

Years later when dad was dead and Gene and his brother Bob were running the shop, they were notoriously hard on young designers, often paying late. When designers would then insist on being paid upfront, Barneys would demand discounts of 18 percent. The bankrupcy put a few designers out of business. Donna Karan survived, but she was left with a $2.4 million unpaid bill. Liza Bruce who had been in business for 15 years wasn't so lucky. She went under.

If I were a nitpicker, I'd also point out that altough they promise Noah's thoughts will be in bold and Gene's in bold italics -- they got it reversed throughout the book. Maybe it's not cool to have a copy editor.