Long before shopping was dictated by digital algorithms and targeted ads, it had Saks Fifth Avenue. For generations of luxury consumers across the United States and beyond, the name was synonymous with elegance, glamour, and an uncompromising standard of good taste. Standing inside the Midtown Manhattan flagship during a 1996 fragrance event, Donatella Versace famously declared, “Saks is New York.” Yet, the department store’s influence reached far past the borders of Manhattan. Its sumptuous, destination-worthy locations scattered across the country became cultural touchstones in their own right, defining the pinnacle of American luxury retail.
From Armani to Zegna, Saks offered an irresistible curation of indulgences. Shoppers could wander through racks of Oscar de la Renta gowns and snakeskin Gucci loafers, admire Montblanc fountain pens, or sample Dior eaux de toilettes. The sales floors featured precisely tailored Ralph Lauren suits and matching Burberry trench coats for both adults and children, alongside Chanel 2.55 handbags and Louis Vuitton briefcases. Under its own house label, the store offered beautifully crafted pearl necklaces, buttery calfskin gloves, and extra-soft cashmere pullovers and cardigans that loyal patrons collected year after year.
“Saks was the reliable destination where you knew you could find whatever you wanted,” says Julia Stedman, a New York-based brand-strategy consultant who works with fashion and technology and shopped at the emporium for decades. “Every luxury brand was there.”
Footwear was a particular strongpoint for the retailer, driven by covetable labels like Manolo Blahnik, Roger Vivier, Jimmy Choo, and Christian Louboutin. At the imposing Manhattan flagship—a Midtown magnet for locals and tourists alike since it first opened its doors in 1924—the massive eighth-floor designer shoe department earned a distinction that no other store in the country could claim. In August 2007, the United States Postal Service granted the floor its very own zip code: 10022-SHOE.
“It was a great shoe department to begin with,” Stedman recalls. “And then they expanded it. Literally, you could find anything and everything you could ever imagine and ever want. And it was always packed and bustling.” In the 2008 film The Women, Annette Bening’s character offered a simpler, widely accepted verdict: “Nobody. Hates. Saks.” At the time, few luxury consumers would have disagreed.
Over the past few years, however, the company’s prestige has taken a severe beating. Financial turmoil and managerial missteps, many of them deeply tied to the landmark 2024 acquisition of Neiman Marcus, culminated in January when Saks Global filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection under $3.4 billion in debt. Following a complex restructuring process, the firm announced in June that it had officially emerged from bankruptcy proceedings. Operating with a significantly reduced footprint of stores, the restructured entity is now known as Exemplar Luxury Group. Whether Saks can ever truly recover its former stature—and regain the affection of disillusioned luxury shoppers—remains an open question across the fashion industry.
Even before the formal restructuring, the everyday shopping experience had noticeably deteriorated. Customers walking into their once-beloved stores increasingly encountered sporadic, sparse assortments across their favorite categories.
“People just felt that it wasn’t the same Saks that they used to shop at,” says Anita Berger, a former senior salesperson at the Saks Fifth Avenue location in St. Louis, Missouri, which had maintained a base of loyal clients for more than half a century.
To be fair, traditional department stores have faced mounting pressures for years. Modern consumers increasingly shop online through brand websites, multi-brand digital storefronts, Amazon, and secondary resale markets like The RealReal. Instead of spending leisurely afternoons browsing racks of clothing and receiving personalized style advice from trusted floor associates, modern shoppers often find their inspiration directly through social media channels. Traditional menswear staples like tailored suits and ties no longer anchor everyday wardrobes the way they once did, a shift that only accelerated in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the classic grand-department-store model—consisting of floor after cavernous floor packed with physical inventory—may simply be outdated.
“What you have is literally this transition and shift in the paradigm,” says Marshal Cohen, chief retail adviser at Circana, a firm that tracks consumer-buying patterns. “The model needs to adjust.”
As Bain & Company noted in a 2024 report examining the state of American department stores, many domestic shoppers have grown increasingly indifferent or averse to the traditional format.
Even before Saks Fifth Avenue’s purchase of Neiman Marcus in December 2024, warning signs were visible to industry insiders as familiar buyers and veteran salespeople began turning over at an unsettling rate.
“You could kind of smell that something was going on, just because everything was getting a little difficult,” says Daniel Wingate, founder and creative director of Wingate, a collection of sophisticated designer women’s apparel previously sold at trunk shows across various Saks locations. “The people in the stores were in and out and changing, unhappy. Then, the rumor started that they were trying to buy Neimans.”
That rumor proved to be true, and the acquisition ultimately saddled Saks Global with enough debt that the company fell severely behind on payments for merchandise. Eventually, many apparel and beauty brands felt they had no financial choice but to stop shipping inventory altogether.
“Every one of my clients was saying, ‘God, the stores look so bad—there’s no inventory,’” explains Gary Wassner, CEO of Hilldun, a financing firm that guarantees payments for roughly 180 fashion and beauty brands carried at Saks Global stores, including Rick Owens, Golden Goose, Ulla Johnson, Isabel Marant, and Victoria Beckham. “The consumer was well aware walking into any Saks Fifth Avenue that the inventory was depleted. It was quite noticeable, particularly as the days wore on.”
“My floor looked so bad,” Berger echoes. “Customers would come in and say, ‘Are you closing? This looks like Saks Off 5th.’ There was nothing new and exciting because they couldn’t get anything—they owed money to everybody.”
The inventory shortages extended to other brands under the corporate umbrella. “We never had a full size run of dresses,” recalls Babatunde Fakuade, who worked for nearly a year as a salesperson at Neiman Marcus Lenox Square in Atlanta. “We would get size 2, 12, 8. It’s like, ‘Where are the other sizes?’ We didn’t get a delivery of full size runs of dresses for months at a time.”
The St. Louis store where Berger spent nearly a decade ultimately closed its doors in May, though she had already departed the previous September.
“How they were treating us, how they were not paying, how the store looked—I just started to feel like, ‘I need to get out,’” she says. Fakuade shares a similar sentiment: “It made more financial sense, literally, to leave the organization without a job secured,” he notes, having left Neiman Marcus months prior to focus on a career as a retail business consultant.
The cash-flow issues plaguing the company actually predated the Neiman Marcus transaction. Saks Global had previously combined Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Horchow, and the discount divisions Saks Off 5th and Last Call. However, Saks entered the deal already carrying substantial debt, much of it linked back to its 2013 purchase by the Hudson’s Bay Company, a historic Canadian retailer with corporate roots dating all the way back to 1670.
Early corporate moves frequently raised eyebrows among market analysts. The Fifth Avenue flagship building was mortgaged in 2014 for approximately $1.2 billion, creating heavy monthly debt service obligations. In 2016, the company acquired off-price retailer Gilt Groupe for $250 million, ostensibly to bolster Saks Off 5th, only to sell it a few years later for an undisclosed sum widely rumored to be drastically lower. Additional corporate investments added further recurring financial liabilities to the cash-strapped company.
“There were a lot of prior Hudson’s Bay issues—leases and bonds—that Saks, through succession, became obligated on,” explains Lorenzo Marinuzzi, a partner at the law firm Morrison Foerster, which represents Saks Global’s unsecured creditors, including luxury conglomerates Chanel and LVMH.
The heavy financial baggage inherited from Hudson’s Bay did little to soothe vendors who were waiting anxiously to be paid for delivered goods. As Marinuzzi puts it, “When you’re telling your vendors that you don’t have money to pay them for goods they’ve sold or shipped or consigned or delivered to your stores, yet you’re paying off this Hudson’s Bay debt, it rubs people the wrong way.” Hudson’s Bay Company ultimately filed for bankruptcy and closed all of its remaining stores.
As the operations of Saks Global began to unravel, many industry observers pointed the finger at Richard Baker, who had served as Hudson’s Bay Company’s governor, executive chairman, and CEO, and subsequently became executive chairman of Saks Global. Baker’s professional background is deeply rooted in real estate, and critics argued that his overarching approach to managing high-end department stores often prioritized property acquisition and complex dealmaking over the delicate craftsmanship of a designer evening dress or a tailored suit. Baker previously purchased Lord & Taylor in 2006 using extensive financing, later selling its flagship building to WeWork in 2017 and its retail operations to Le Tote in 2019 before the physical stores were shuttered in 2020.
This real-estate-heavy mindset was subtly reflected in corporate communications. A July 2024 press release announcing the planned Neiman Marcus purchase described the newly formed entity as “a combination of world-class luxury retail and real-estate assets.” When the transaction was finalized, Baker stated that the explicit plan was “to redefine the luxury shopping experience” anchored, among other things, by “a portfolio of prime real estate.”
“There’s a lot of head-scratching about the way Richard Baker handled himself and ran the company, his background—maybe it wasn’t the right background for this kind of retailer,” Marinuzzi says. “When people thought about the decisions that were being made and how the company was being operated, they didn’t really trust management, and they didn’t trust Richard Baker.”
When the deal was first announced, Baker told The New York Times that “when selling luxury products, you need beautiful stores and salespeople customers trust.” Yet, by the time Saks Global filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, many of those same stores featured thinly stocked sales floors and demoralized, disgruntled employees.
Baker officially departed from Saks Global in January. These days, his public focus appears to have shifted back to real estate ventures, highlighted by social media profiles that describe him as being “Behind $Billions in Real Estate.” When reached for comment regarding this story, Baker offered a succinct response: “No comment on Saks at this time.” Exemplar Luxury Group also declined repeated requests to make current executives available for interviews.
When Saks Global formally filed for bankruptcy protection, the financial sums owed to the world’s largest luxury houses were staggering. According to court documents filed in January 2026, the retailer owed more than $136 million to Chanel; roughly $60 million to Kering, the parent company of Gucci, Saint Laurent, and Bottega Veneta; approximately $30 million to Richemont, which owns Cartier, Montblanc, and Chloé; and nearly $16 million to the Estée Lauder Companies, encompassing brands like La Mer, Jo Malone London, Le Labo, and Tom Ford.
While these massive losses are undoubtedly significant, global conglomerates possess considerable financial cushions, including their own standalone boutiques, alternative department-store partnerships, and immense international reach. For smaller, independent brands, however, delayed or missing payments can prove catastrophic.
“As a small business, you have limited bandwidth,” says a senior executive at a small, critically acclaimed beauty brand formerly carried at Neiman Marcus. “Finances are not just endless.”
That beauty brand has still not received the “six figures” it is owed for inventory shipped to the retailer, despite filing formal legal paperwork to recover at least a portion of the debt. Deprived of that revenue, the company’s small management team was forced to cut ties with multiple contracted freelancers. One manager departed for alternative employment, and the brand is now struggling to rebuild its retail distribution network and consumer base with other partners.
She is one of numerous sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity within an interconnected industry where professional relationships are paramount. Many former Saks Global staffers approached for comment declined to speak, citing active non-disclosure agreements or ongoing litigation concerning unpaid wages and commissions.
Independent beauty and fashion labels were far from alone in making severe operational sacrifices to survive without expected revenue.
“You have to keep going,” explains an executive at another beauty label owed more than a quarter of a million dollars by Saks Global. “So you’re looking at your people, you’re looking at your programs. You might be cutting advertising or awareness programs. You may be cutting marketing plans, launches, photo shoots, company parties. It’s going to be rolled all the way across, because for small businesses to lose money like that is very serious. It seriously affects your bottom line.”
For one celebrity-adored women’s fashion label carried by the retailer, the fallout included canceling a major runway show and forfeiting the financial deposit on the event venue, according to a marketing executive familiar with the situation.
A senior executive at another lauded fashion label reports that missing disbursements directly compromised the company’s ability to pay for raw materials like fabric and buttons, manufacturing costs, internal staff, and essential external partners such as public relations agencies and business consultants. The brand ultimately resorted to laying off 20 percent of its workforce to weather what the executive describes as “this cash vacuum.”
The experience, he adds, “will probably stall our business five years in terms of its growth trajectory.”
His brand is owed several hundred thousand dollars and has received only a single full payment for collections spanning 2024 and 2025. On other invoices, he notes, the company was paid mere pennies on the dollar, and he estimates that the brand will ultimately recover only about 20 percent of its total losses.
The operational breakdown began with incremental payment delays, which quickly snowgraded into a total collapse in communication. “We continuously started reaching out for payment and updates, and they went ghost mode on us,” he says. “They didn’t respond to us for months.”
Compounding the frustration, inquiries regarding overdue payments were frequently routed to corporate representatives in Bengaluru, India, where Saks Global had centralized various administrative functions, including finance, human resources, merchandising, analytics, and marketing.
“It felt like people who really were not connected to who we were,” he says. “I’m like, ‘Who are we talking to?’” In one instance, he notes, the brand’s own name was misspelled in formal correspondence.
“You’re trying to explain to India how you work,” says Wingate, the designer who previously participated in Saks trunk shows. “In the end, it felt like that was a stunt to just delay your payments.” Wingate ultimately utilized a collection agency to recover a portion of his outstanding balance, but still holds “six figures of open invoices that haven’t been paid.”
Predictably, independent brands faced significantly greater hurdles in recovering funds compared to industry heavyweights. According to a source familiar with Saks Global’s vendor settlements, many of the world-renowned luxury brands carried across Saks, Neiman Marcus, and Bergdorf Goodman successfully recovered at least half of what they were owed. Some prominent designer labels reportedly recouped all or nearly all of their outstanding balances, though those specific financial terms remain strictly guarded to prevent competitors from demanding comparable deals. Brands operating under direct concession or consignment structures fared somewhat better, recovering close to their full amounts.
Representatives for Chanel, Kering, LVMH, and the Estée Lauder Companies declined to comment on the exact status of their respective debt recovery efforts.
Meanwhile, financial guarantors like Hilldun navigated their own path through the crisis. The designers under Hilldun’s portfolio were collectively owed more than $66 million by Saks Global, though slightly less than half of that total involved shipments that Hilldun had not formally guaranteed. CEO Gary Wassner states that his firm has paid its client brands virtually all of the approved debt, aside from a small number of vendors whose specific invoices are still undergoing reconciliation.
Some independent labels had already weathered severe payment disruptions leading up to Neiman Marcus’s previous 2020 bankruptcy before encountering the deeper troubles of Saks Global.
“We gave up,” says an executive running a tastemaker-approved unisex grooming brand sold at both Neimans and Saks during both eras. “They promised to pay you if you would ship to them again, but I wasn’t taking that risk.” His company remains owed more than $100,000 by the retailer.
Following its bankruptcy filing this year, Saks Global initiated a sweeping corporate restructuring. The company permanently closed 21 brick-and-mortar locations—comprising 18 Saks Fifth Avenue stores and three Neiman Marcus outlets. The closures included historic outposts such as the Chicago store, where Saks had operated since 1929, alongside locations in Costa Mesa, Las Vegas, St. Louis, San Antonio, and McLean, Virginia. More than 60 Saks Off 5th and Last Call discount stores were also shuttered. Notably, the sole international Saks outpost, located in Kazakhstan, remains operational.
As sales floors were cleared out and remaining inventory heavily marked down, shoppers once again witnessed Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus locations stripped of the upscale allure that had long defined them. Social media platforms like TikTok were flooded with videos documenting grim, half-empty stores nearing their final days, presenting a bleak spectacle far removed from traditional luxury retail.
“Bad news travels faster than good news,” says Circana adviser Marshal Cohen. “People love to share their war stories of shopping.” And in the era of smartphones, that negative sentiment spreads faster than ever before.
As part of its emergence from bankruptcy, an initial injection of $1.75 billion in new capital allowed the company to clear outstanding supplier debts and resume the steady flow of merchandise. In March, Exemplar Luxury Group announced that nearly 600 brands had officially resumed shipping products to its stores. A recent walk through the Saks Fifth Avenue flagship situated across from Rockefeller Center revealed sales floors that once again appeared amply stocked.
According to Exemplar, floor associates across Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, and Saks Fifth Avenue are reporting higher overall sales figures this year compared to the same period in 2025, though corporate leadership declined to disclose specific growth percentages.
Nevertheless, rebuilding eroded trust with both discerning consumers and the broader fashion community remains an uphill battle.
“It’s hard to come out of that with both your brand partners and with your consumers,” notes Aaron Cheris, a partner at Bain & Company and head of its global retail practice. For consumers in particular, negative experiences regarding customer service and depleted product selection “creates a bit of a doom loop that you really have to get out of.”
The fundamental challenge, Cheris adds, is straightforward: “Can you convince both suppliers and customers that there’s a new day one?”
For independent designers who remain deeply skeptical of the restructured enterprise, Exemplar’s loss may ultimately prove to be its competitors’ gain.
“Now more than ever, every brand I know wants to be in Bloomingdale’s,” says one industry insider. “It’s almost like Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom will become what Barneys was in the ’80s.”
Meanwhile, many former loyal shoppers are adopting a cautious stance.
“It’s going to take a while to rebuild my trust,” says Stedman, the longtime Saks customer. “Going there during that funky period, there was no stock, everything was on sale—it was madness. During that time, what made Saks special was not there anymore. I’m going to take a wait-and-see approach and see what happens with them.”
