Almost 100 years after Barney Pressman opened his first store at 101 Seventh Avenue, the New York luxury institution is returning to its original address. With a timely yet timeless campaign, updated interior design and a collection of exclusive products, Barneys’ new downtown flagship is focusing on the local market.
“We are going back to a neighborhood that has changed,” says creative director Dennis Freedman. “It’s not the neighborhood that it was when Barneys first opened.” Nor is it the neighborhood that it was when the store closed in 1997. Since then, the area has seen the arrival of residential development projects, the High Line, the Whitney Museum, and several new hotels.
“We realized we weren’t capturing as much of the downtown customer, either on Madison Avenue or online, as we had hoped or thought,” says COO and Senior Executive Vice President Daniella Vitale. “We had had two very small Co-op stores—one on 18th and one in Soho—but they certainly didn’t reflect Barneys and the positioning of the store, so we wanted to create a proper environment downtown.”
After looking at potential spaces in Soho, Tribeca and Chelsea, the brand opted to return to its roots on Seventh Avenue between 16th and 17th Streets. “The space itself was completely serendipitous,” says Vitale, who still owns a pair of Robert Clergerie loafers she purchased at the Chelsea flagship when she was 18. “It was the exact, original store, and it was a footprint that we felt was manageable.”
At 55,000 square feet, the new downtown store is only about half the size of the original, giving it the desired intimate, neighborhood vibe. “We want the store to be warm and service-oriented and reflect a neighborhood customer,” says Vitale, adding that today’s New Yorkers want convenience. “People who live downtown don’t usually want to come uptown to shop, so it’s a lifestyle shift that we want to be able to cater to.”
The flagship will offer various in-store services for the neighborhood clientele, including a barbershop by Blindbarber and a Fred’s restaurant, which will have what Vitale calls an “evening culture,” allowing customers to linger and enjoy a drink. In addition, Barneys is launching two mobile service apps. The first will be a customer-facing app to provide information on respective brands. The second will be a clienteling app, which will help the in-store team better service repeat customers by storing purchase history and shopping habits.
The downtown flagship is significantly smaller than its 230,000-square-footMadison Avenue counterpart. The brand worked with Tribeca-based architect Steven Harris to create an open interior space despite its relatively small size. “I think this store is the first of our projects that Steven has worked on from start to finish, so it’s a pure expression of our collaboration, and it very well expresses how we feel about luxury,” explains Freedman.
Every aspect of the store has been carefully considered and custom crafted, from the terrazzo floors, to the many iterations of cut marble, to the stainless steel and brass fixtures faceted like jewels. A plaster relief, one of the store’s signature pieces designed by Harris, starts on the lower foundation floor and is repeated on the main floor.
Another signature piece is the grand staircase, what Freedman describes as “a free-floating spiral,” which acts as a central fixture and expands the store’s interior space. “Stephen has done an extraordinary job of combining many materials in a seamless way that allows the merchandise to be the center of attention, but it’s the most exquisite presentation,” he says.
With its smaller footprint, Barneys had to be very strategic about which brands and product categories would be represented downtown. “It was extremely painful,” Vitale says of the editing process, “We want the luxury of space in that store, so we don’t want to jam it with product.” Customers will find a mix of the retailer’s historic brands, like Alaïa and Dries van Noten, along with newer labels like Delvaux and Fontana Milano 1915.
The brand is also investing heavily in its “Exclusively Ours” category, which Vitale says is becoming a larger and larger portion of Barneys’ business. “It’s well over 20 percent, and it grows exponentially, so that penetration will probably be 30 percent within 18 months.” As luxury products become more accessible to a wider audience through online channels, exclusives entice shoppers back into physical stores. “People want something that no one else has, and it’s our job to differentiate,” explains Vitale. “Our client is looking for something more rare and exclusive.”
“Global exclusives”—special products only sold at Barneys downtown—include women’s capsule collections by Irene Neuwirth, Feathered Soul, Elder Statesman and Sidney Garber. Men can expect capsule collections from Fear of God and Greg Lauren. The store will also sell U.S. exclusives from Alexander Wang, Proenza Schouler, Aquazzura, Valentino and Gianvito Rossi, among others.
To introduce this new, modern store, Barneys created a new, modern campaign that celebrates its hometown. “It’s a love poem to New York City,” explains Freedman. Entitled “Our Town,” the campaign was shot all over the New York Metro area by one of Barneys’ favorite photographers, Bruce Weber. “[He was] the only photographer that I would want to give this assignment to,” he says. “Bruce has lived in this city almost his whole lifetime, and I know how much this city means to him.”
Having worked together for over 15 years, Freedman and Weber closely collaborated to create a campaign that pays homage to New York’s diverse identity. “When we say New York, we mean all of New York, we mean all five boroughs, not just Manhattan,” says Freedman. “We want to capture the cultural diversity, the ethnic diversity, from Park Avenue to Coney Island to Harlem to Downtown to Chelsea. It’s the most exciting mix of people in the world.”
Like his groundbreaking Spring 2014 campaign “Brothers, Sisters, Sons & Daughters,” which featured 17 transgender individuals, Weber’s newest work for Barneys captures human emotion and relationships while breaking the mold of traditional fashion campaigns. “[He] seemed to find something timeless,” says Freedman. “You look at some of the photographs and you think, ‘My God, these could have been taken by Garry Winogrand. These could have been taken 20 years ago.’”
But while “Our Town’s” print campaign is timeless, its film component is decidedly 2016. Weber created nine short films that will christen the flagship’s windows when the store opens. Opting out of traditional video screens, Freedman’s team created sculptural structures that the films will be projected on. “It’s a very surprising way of showing these films,” he says, “but that’s what Bruce is so brilliant at.”
Shoppers will have to wait until the store opens on February 15th to see the full film installation, but Freedman says they feature eclectic bites of New York sounds, words and music, from poetry, to a Theodore Roosevelt speech, to the vocals of Yiddish theatre star Molly Picon. “I think people will be very surprised at the New York we are showing,” he says. “It’s a city seen through the eyes of Bruce Weber and Barneys New York.”