Long before shopping was dictated by search algorithms and targeted online ads, it had Saks Fifth Avenue. For several generations of discerning luxury buyers, the name alone served as an undisputed arbiter of elegance, glamour, and impeccably good taste. "Saks is New York," Donatella Versace once declared inside the retailer’s grand Midtown flagship, yet its influence extended far beyond Manhattan. Its sumptuous, beautifully curated stores across the country became coveted destinations in their own right, shaping American fashion and defining the very concept of high-end department store shopping.
From Armani to Zegna, Saks carried rack upon rack of enticing indulgences that captured the imaginations of wealthy shoppers. Customers could browse Oscar de la Renta evening gowns and snakeskin Gucci loafers, select Montblanc fountain pens and Dior eaux de toilettes, or admire precisely tailored Ralph Lauren suits and matching Burberry trench coats designed for both adults and children. There were Chanel 2.55 handbags and Louis Vuitton briefcases displayed alongside the store’s own sophisticated house label, which offered beautifully crafted pearl necklaces, buttery calfskin gloves, and extra-soft cashmere pullovers and cardigans.
"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 retailer for decades. "Every luxury brand was there."
Footwear was a particular strongpoint of the emporium, especially from covetable, high-end labels like Manolo Blahnik, Roger Vivier, Jimmy Choo, and Christian Louboutin. At the imposing Manhattan flagship—a Midtown magnet for both local residents and international tourists since it first opened its doors in 1924—the massive eighth-floor designer-shoe department earned a unique distinction that no other store in the country could claim. In 2007, the United States Postal Service recognized its sheer cultural and commercial footprint by giving the department its own exclusive 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 verdict on the cultural sentiment of the era: "Nobody. Hates. Saks." At the time, it would have been hard for any retail observer to disagree.
Over the past few years, however, the company’s storied prestige has taken a severe beating. Financial and managerial problems, many directly tied to the turbulent 2024 acquisition of Neiman Marcus, culminated in Saks Global filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January with a staggering $3.4 billion in debt. Following an intensive restructuring process, the firm announced in June that it had officially emerged from bankruptcy protection. Operating with a significantly reduced footprint of stores, the reorganized entity is now known as Exemplar Luxury Group. Whether Saks can fully recover its former stature—and regain the enduring affection of luxury shoppers—remains an open and heavily debated question within the retail industry.
In the immediate wake of the deal, the in-store shopping experience had already visibly deteriorated. Customers increasingly found their once-beloved retail destination stocked with sporadic, often sparse assortments across their favorite merchandise 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 fiercely loyal client base for more than half a century.
To be fair, traditional department stores have been under immense structural pressure for years. Modern consumers increasingly shop online through brand websites, multi-brand e-commerce platforms, Amazon, and resale sites like The RealReal. Instead of spending leisurely afternoons browsing physical racks of clothing and receiving personalized advice from trusted, long-tenured sales associates, today’s shoppers find inspiration primarily through social media feeds. Furthermore, tailored suits and men’s ties no longer anchor everyday wardrobes the way they once did, a shift that accelerated dramatically in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many retail analysts argue that the classic grand-department-store model—characterized by floor after cavernous floor packed densely with inventory—may well be fundamentally outdated.
"What you have is literally this transition and shift in the paradigm," says Marshal Cohen, chief retail adviser at Circana, a leading firm that tracks consumer-buying patterns. "The model needs to adjust."
As Bain & Company noted in a comprehensive 2024 report examining the state of American department stores, "Many U.S. shoppers are now indifferent or averse to the format."
Even before Saks Fifth Avenue’s high-profile purchase of Neiman Marcus in December 2024, warning signs were visible to industry insiders as familiar buyers and experienced sales associates 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 that was sold via exclusive trunk shows in Saks Fifth Avenue locations. "The people in the stores were in and out and changing, unhappy." He adds, "Then, the rumor started that they were trying to buy Neimans."
That rumor ultimately proved true, of course, and the ambitious acquisition helped saddle Saks Global with an insurmountable mountain of debt, causing the company to fall dangerously behind on payments for inventory. Eventually, many fashion and beauty brands felt they had no choice left but to completely stop shipping new merchandise to the stores.
"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 approximately 180 fashion and beauty brands carried at Saks Global’s stores, including prominent labels like 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," he adds. "It was quite noticeable, particularly as the days wore on."
"My floor looked so bad," Berger echoes, reflecting on her final months at the St. Louis branch. "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 operational strain trickled down to every corner of the sales floor. "We never had a full size run of dresses," recalls Babatunde Fakuade, who worked for nearly a year as a sales associate 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 had 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 shared a similar sentiment, noting that it made better financial sense to leave the organization voluntarily even without a new job secured. He departed Neiman Marcus to pursue a career as a retail business consultant.
The cash-flow crises that crippled the retailer actually predated the Neiman Marcus acquisition. Saks Global had been formed by combining Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus stores, Bergdorf Goodman, Horchow, and the discount divisions Saks Off 5th and Last Call. However, Saks had entered the deal already carrying a heavy debt burden, much of it linked to its 2013 purchase by Hudson’s Bay Company, the historic Canadian retailer with corporate roots dating back to 1670.
Certain early financial moves raised immediate eyebrows among market analysts. The Fifth Avenue flagship building was mortgaged in 2014 for approximately $1.2 billion, requiring hefty monthly debt service payments. In 2016, the company acquired off-price retailer Gilt Groupe for $250 million, ostensibly to bolster Saks Off 5th, only to sell it again a couple of years later for an undisclosed price widely rumored to be far lower than the purchase sum. Other corporate investments added still more recurring financial liabilities to a company already facing tight cash flows.
"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 powerhouses like Chanel and LVMH.
Hudson’s Bay Company’s historical financial baggage did little to soothe jittery vendors who were left waiting indefinitely to be paid for their 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 retail operations.
As Saks Global began to unravel operationally, many industry observers pointed their fingers directly 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 rooted heavily in real estate, and critics frequently argued that his approach to managing historic department stores placed an outsized emphasis on property acquisition and complex dealmaking rather than the finer details of retail merchandising, such as the craftsmanship of a high-end suit or a designer evening gown. Baker famously acquired Lord & Taylor in 2006 using extensive financing, later sold its iconic Fifth Avenue building to WeWork in 2017, and transferred its retail operations to Le Tote in 2019 before the brick-and-mortar stores were permanently closed in 2020.
This real estate-centric philosophy was clearly reflected in Saks Global’s own 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 publicly stated that the overarching strategic plan was "to redefine the luxury shopping experience" through, among other initiatives, "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 notes. "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 mega-merger transaction 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 very stores featured thinly stocked sales floors and demoralized, disgruntled employees. Baker officially stepped down from Saks Global in January. Today, his public focus appears to have returned primarily to real estate ventures, including active social media profiles where his biographical description proudly reads, "Behind $Billions in Real Estate." When contacted for an interview regarding the collapse of Saks Global, Baker offered a concise response: "No comment on Saks at this time." Exemplar Luxury Group also declined repeated requests to make current executives available for comment.
When Saks Global formally filed for bankruptcy protection, the sums owed to some of the world’s most prominent luxury conglomerates and independent designers 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; about $30 million to Richemont, which owns Cartier, Montblanc, and Chloé; and nearly $16 million to the Estée Lauder Companies, whose extensive brand portfolio includes La Mer, Jo Malone London, Le Labo, and Tom Ford.
While those financial losses are undeniably vast, global luxury giants possess substantial safety cushions, including their own standalone retail boutiques, counters in rival department stores, and immense international distribution networks. However, for smaller independent brands operating with tight profit margins, late or missing payments can prove far more crippling.
"As a small business, you have limited bandwidth," says a senior executive at a small, critically acclaimed beauty brand that was carried at Neiman Marcus. "Finances are not just endless."
This executive’s brand has still not received the "six figures" it is officially owed for product orders shipped to the retailer, despite filing formal legal paperwork seeking to recover at least a portion of the debt. Without that vital income, the brand’s small management team was forced to halt contracts with several external freelancers upon whom they heavily relied. One key manager subsequently left the company for alternative employment, while the firm struggles to rebuild its broader retail network and consumer base with other vendors.
She is one of several industry sources who spoke under strict conditions of anonymity in a close-knit market where reputations are paramount. Many former Saks Global staffers approached for this story explained that they had signed non-disclosure agreements or were actively involved in ongoing litigation regarding unpaid compensation, forcing them to decline public comment.
The boutique beauty brand was far from alone in making painful sacrifices to keep operating without expected revenues. "You have to keep going," explains an executive at another independent 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 brand retailed at Saks, the fallout included the abrupt cancellation of a planned runway show—resulting in the complete loss of the substantial deposit paid for the event space—according to a marketing executive familiar with the situation.
Similarly, a senior executive at another lauded independent fashion label stated that missing vendor payments severely impaired the company’s ongoing ability to pay for essential raw materials like fabric and buttons, manufacturing production, full-time staff, and necessary outside contractors such as public relations firms and business consultants. The financial squeeze ultimately forced the company to lay off 20 percent of its workforce to survive what the executive describes as "this cash vacuum."
The entire ordeal, 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 delivered across 2024 and 2025. On certain invoices, he notes, the company was paid merely pennies on the dollar, and he estimates that the business will ultimately recover only about 20 percent of its total outstanding debt.
The operational breakdown typically began with delayed payments, which gradually snowballed into a total collapse in communication. "We continuously started reaching out for payment and updates, and they went ghost mode on us," the fashion executive says. "They didn’t respond to us for months."
Compounding the frustration, inquiries regarding unpaid invoices were frequently routed to corporate representatives located in Bengaluru, India, where Saks Global had outsourced 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 email correspondence.
"You’re trying to explain to India how you work," adds Wingate, the independent designer who previously sold his pieces via Saks trunk shows. "In the end, it felt like that was a stunt to just delay your payments." Wingate ultimately employed a collection agency to recover a portion of the funds he is owed, though he acknowledges still carrying "six figures of open invoices that haven’t been paid."
Predictably, independent brands faced significantly greater hurdles in recovering their funds compared to industry-dominating luxury houses. According to a source familiar with Saks Global’s vendor settlement negotiations, 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 high-profile designer brands reportedly recouped most, if not all, of their outstanding balances, though those specific financial terms remain strictly guarded to prevent competing houses from demanding comparable concessions. Brands operating under consignment or concession business models also managed to recover sums close to their total losses.
Representatives for Chanel, Kering, LVMH, and the Estée Lauder Companies declined to comment on the exact status or recovery of their respective Saks debts.
Meanwhile, financial guarantors played a critical role for smaller labels. Wassner notes that the designers represented by Hilldun were owed more than $66 million by Saks Global, though slightly less than half of that total involved shipments that Hilldun had not directly guaranteed. According to Wassner, his firm has successfully reimbursed its clients for virtually all of the approved guaranteed debt, aside from a small number of vendor accounts whose individual invoices are still undergoing final reconciliation.
Other brands had already experienced the perils of department store restructuring during Neiman Marcus’s previous bankruptcy filing in 2020, long before encountering the deeper systemic troubles of Saks Global.
"We gave up," says an executive who manages a critically praised 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 is currently out of pocket by more than $100,000 in unpaid receivables.
Following its bankruptcy filing, Saks Global initiated a sweeping restructuring strategy designed to prune unprofitable locations and stabilize operations. The company closed 21 brick-and-mortar stores—comprising 18 Saks Fifth Avenue locations and three Neiman Marcus outposts. Among the shuttered branches were historic flagships such as the Chicago store, where Saks had operated continuously since 1929, alongside locations in Costa Mesa, Las Vegas, St. Louis, San Antonio, and McLean, Virginia. In addition, management pulled the plug on more than 60 Saks Off 5th and Last Call discount stores. (The sole international Saks outpost, located in Kazakhstan, remains operational.)
As store inventories were aggressively liquidated and clearance sales drew large crowds, shoppers once again encountered retail floors stripped of the upscale visual allure that had historically defined the brands. Social media platforms like TikTok quickly filled with viral video clips showcasing grim, depleted sales environments that resembled apocalyptic retail spaces rather than temples of high luxury.
"Bad news travels faster than good news," says Cohen, the Circana retail adviser. "People love to share their war stories of shopping." Thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones, those cautionary tales now spread faster and wider than ever before.
As Exemplar Luxury Group pushed forward with its post-bankruptcy reorganization, an initial injection of $1.75 billion in fresh capital provided the liquidity needed to pay off suppliers and jump-start the flow of new merchandise. By March, Exemplar announced that nearly 600 brands had officially resumed shipping goods to its stores. Recent visitors to the flagship Saks Fifth Avenue location across from Rockefeller Center in Manhattan will find that the sales floors appear amply stocked once again.
According to figures released by Exemplar, sales associates across Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, and Saks Fifth Avenue are recording higher overall sales figures this year compared to the same period in 2025, though corporate leadership declined to disclose the specific percentage growth.
Even so, repairing fractured relationships and restoring institutional 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 characterized by poor service and sparse product selections "creates a bit of a doom loop that you really have to get out of," he explains.
The fundamental challenge facing the newly formed Exemplar group, Cheris adds, is stark and straightforward: "Can you convince both suppliers and customers that there’s a new day one?"
For independent designers who remain deeply skeptical of department store conglomerates, Exemplar’s ongoing vulnerabilities may ultimately become its competitors’ gain.
"Now more than ever, every brand I know wants to be in Bloomingdale’s," notes one industry insider. "It’s almost like Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom will become what Barneys was in the ’80s."
Meanwhile, many loyal shoppers are exercising caution before returning to the fold. "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," she adds.
