The Rise and Fall of the House of Barneys: A Family Tale of Chutzpah, Glory, and Greed

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Description

A scintillating true tale of miracles and misdeeds on the earth of retail specializes in the meticulous construction of Barney’s over two generations, and the slightly brief unraveling that occurred under the inept leadership of several members of the family.
The history of Barneys is the history of The us itself in the 20th century. Barney Pressman was once a hard-working nobody who sold mostly second-hand clothing in a nowhere neighborhood in Manhattan. From those humble beginnings rose a store that became famous for the sheer volume of its suits, and the discount prices for which they were sold. But Barney Pressman’s son, Fred, had a different vision. He wanted his store to be more upscale, even supposing it couldn’t be uptown, like Bloomingdale’s. He pulled that off, but his sons–Barney’s grandsons–wanted even more. They envisioned a plush uptown store, franchised all over the world, with no expenses spared. And so they spent $267 million on their Madison Avenue store–$600,000 alone for a hand-assembled marble-chip floor–sinking the three-generation family business in a mere 10 years.

Levine shapes this story less as a tragedy than a lesson in hubris–and in business. All of Barney and Fred Pressman’s business savvy corrupted into snobbery when Fred’s sons took over. Barneys became “too New Yorky for most New Yorkers.” There’s an old saying that no one goes broke underestimating the taste of Americans. The converse is that fortunes are easily lost going the other way. Barneys is also the most fascinating proof of that adage in American history. –Lou Schuler

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