Long before shopping was dictated by algorithms, it was defined by Saks Fifth Avenue. For several generations of luxury buyers, Saks served as the undisputed arbiter of elegance, glamour, and impeccably good taste. “Saks is New York,” Donatella Versace once declared inside its Midtown flagship, but its cultural and commercial influence extended far beyond Manhattan. Its sumptuous stores across the country became coveted destinations in their own right, functioning as cultural hubs for high-end fashion and lifestyle.
From Armani to Zegna, Saks carried rack upon rack of enticing indulgences. Shoppers could find Oscar de la Renta gowns and snakeskin Gucci loafers, Montblanc fountain pens and Dior eaux de toilettes, precisely tailored Ralph Lauren suits, matching Burberry trench coats for adults and children, Chanel 2.55 handbags, and Louis Vuitton briefcases. Under its own house label, the retailer 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 there for decades. “Every luxury brand was there.”
Footwear was a particular strongpoint, especially from covetable labels like Manolo Blahnik, Roger Vivier, Jimmy Choo, and Christian Louboutin. At the imposing Manhattan flagship—a Midtown magnet for locals and tourists since it opened in 1924—the massive eighth-floor designer-shoe department earned a distinction that no other store in the country could claim: In 2007, the United States Postal Service gave it its own zip code: 10022-SHOE.
“It was a great shoe department to begin with,” Stedman says. “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: “Nobody. Hates. Saks.” At the time, it would have been hard to disagree.
Over the past few years, however, the company’s prestige has taken a severe beating. Financial and managerial problems, many tied to the 2024 acquisition of Neiman Marcus, culminated in Saks Global’s filing for bankruptcy protection in January with $3.4 billion in debt. After restructuring, the firm announced in June that it emerged from Chapter 11. With far fewer stores, it is now called Exemplar Luxury Group. Whether Saks can recover its former stature—and luxury shoppers’ affection—remains an open question.
In the wake of the deal, the shopping experience had already deteriorated. Customers increasingly found their once-beloved store stocked with sporadic, often sparse assortments in 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 loyal clients for more than half a century.
To be fair, department stores have been under pressure for years. Consumers now shop online through brand websites, Amazon, and resale platforms like The RealReal. Instead of spending afternoons browsing racks of clothing and receiving advice from trusted salespeople, modern shoppers increasingly find inspiration on social media. Suits and men’s ties no longer anchor everyday wardrobes as they once did, a shift accelerated by the pandemic. Furthermore, the classic grand-department-store model—featuring floor after cavernous floor packed with physical merchandise—may well be outdated.
“What you have is literally this transition and shift in the paradigm,” says Marshal Cohen, chief retail adviser at Circana, a company that tracks consumer-buying patterns. “The model needs to adjust.”
As Bain & Company noted in a 2024 report on the state of American department stores, “Many U.S. shoppers are now indifferent or averse to the format.”
Even before Saks Fifth Avenue’s purchase of Neiman Marcus in December 2024, some brands sensed trouble, as familiar buyers and 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 that was sold at 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 proved true, of course, and the acquisition helped saddle Saks Global with enough debt that it fell behind paying for product. Many brands eventually felt that they had no choice but to stop shipping entirely.
“Every one of my clients was saying, ‘God, the stores look so bad—there’s no inventory,’” explains Gary Wassner, C.E.O. of Hilldun, a financing firm that guarantees payments for about 180 fashion and beauty brands carried at Saks Global’s 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,” he adds. “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.”
“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 closed 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.
“It made more financial sense, literally, to leave the organization without a job secured,” Fakuade says. He left Neiman Marcus to focus on a career as a retail business consultant.
The cash-flow issues predated the acquisition. Saks Global combined Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus stores, Bergdorf Goodman, Horchow, and the discount businesses Saks Off 5th and Last Call. Saks entered the deal carrying debt, much of it linked to its 2013 purchase by Hudson’s Bay Company, the former Canadian retailer with roots dating back to 1670. Some early corporate moves raised eyebrows. The Fifth Avenue flagship was mortgaged in 2014 for about $1.2 billion, requiring hefty monthly payments. In 2016, the company bought 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 rumored to be far lower. Other investments added still more recurring payments 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 Chanel and LVMH.
Hudson’s Bay’s financial baggage did little to soothe vendors waiting to be paid. 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 filed for bankruptcy and eventually closed all its stores.
As Saks Global began to unravel, many observers pointed their fingers at Richard Baker, who served as Hudson’s Bay Company’s governor, executive chairman, and C.E.O., and later became executive chairman of Saks Global. Baker’s background is in real estate, and critics argued that his approach to running department stores often emphasized property and dealmaking over the traditional craft of retail, such as sourcing high-end suits or designer evening dresses. He bought Lord & Taylor in 2006 with extensive financing, later sold its building to WeWork in 2017, and transferred its retail operation to Le Tote in 2019 before the brick-and-mortar stores closed in 2020.
The strategic shift showed up in Saks Global’s own corporate language. A July 2024 press release announcing the planned purchase described the new company as “a combination of world-class luxury retail and real-estate assets.” When the deal finalized, Baker said the plan was “to redefine the luxury shopping experience” with, among other things, “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 transaction was announced, Baker told The New York Times that “when selling luxury products, you need beautiful stores and salespeople customers trust.” By the time Saks Global filed for Chapter 11, many of its stores instead featured thinly stocked sales floors and disgruntled employees.
Baker left Saks Global in January. These days, his public focus appears to be back on real estate, including regular posts on his Instagram account, where his bio describes him as “Behind $Billions in Real Estate.” Baker’s response to a request for an interview was, “No comment on Saks at this time.” Exemplar Luxury Group also declined repeated requests to make executives available for comment.
When Saks Global filed for bankruptcy protection, the sums owed to some of the world’s biggest luxury brands were staggering. According to a January 2026 court document, the retailer owed more than $136 million to Chanel; roughly $60 million to Kering, the owner of Gucci, Saint Laurent, and Bottega Veneta; about $30 million to Richemont, the parent company of Cartier, Montblanc, and Chloé; and nearly $16 million to the Estée Lauder Companies, whose brands include La Mer, Jo Malone London, Le Labo, and Tom Ford.
While these global giants possess substantial financial cushions—including their own boutiques, counters in other department stores, and immense international reach—late or missing payments can be crippling for smaller enterprises.
“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.”
Her brand has still not received the “six figures” it is owed for orders shipped to the retailer, despite legal efforts to recover at least part of the funds. Without that income, the brand’s small management team was forced to halt contracts with freelance workers, and one manager left for another job. The company is now attempting to rebuild its retail network and customer base through other vendors.
She is one of several sources who spoke under condition of anonymity in an insular industry. Many former Saks Global staffers approached for this story declined to comment, citing signed nondisclosure agreements or ongoing litigation over unpaid wages and compensation.
The beauty brand was hardly alone in making sacrifices to keep operating 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 a celebrity-adored women’s fashion brand carried at Saks, the fallout included canceling a runway show and losing the deposit on the event space, according to a marketing executive familiar with the proceedings.
A senior executive at another lauded fashion label says missing payments impaired the company’s ability to pay for fabric, buttons, production, staff, and essential contractors such as public relations firms and consultants. The company ultimately resorted to laying off 20 percent of its staff due to what he terms “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 just one full payment for collections spanning 2024 and 2025, he says. On some invoices, the company was paid pennies on the dollar, and the executive estimates he will eventually recover only about 20 percent of what is owed.
The problems began with delayed payments, which eventually snowballed into a total breakdown 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.”
To make matters worse, appeals for payment were routed to representatives in Bengaluru, India, where Saks Global consolidated 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 email, he notes, the brand’s name was misspelled.
“You’re trying to explain to India how you work,” says Wingate, the designer who sold his pieces at Saks trunk shows. “In the end, it felt like that was a stunt to just delay your payments.” He utilized a collection agency to recover a portion of his owed funds, but still carries six figures in unpaid open invoices.
Independent brands have predictably faced greater difficulty collecting debts than marquee names. According to a source familiar with Saks Global’s vendor payments, many world-renowned luxury brands carried by Saks, Neimans, and Bergdorf Goodman have received at least half of what they were owed. Some well-known designer brands have been paid in full or close to it, though terms remain closely guarded to prevent competitors from demanding comparable settlements. Brands operating on concession or consignment models have similarly recovered close to their full balances.
Chanel, Kering, LVMH, and the Estée Lauder Companies did not reply to requests for comment regarding their debt recovery.
The designers represented by Hilldun were owed more than $66 million by Saks Global, though just under half of that debt involved shipments Hilldun had not guaranteed. Wassner states that his firm has paid its clients virtually all of the approved debt, aside from a few vendors whose invoices are still undergoing reconciliation.
Some brands had already weathered payment crises leading up to Neiman Marcus’s 2020 bankruptcy before encountering Saks Global’s recent difficulties.
“We gave up,” says an executive who runs a unisex grooming brand sold at 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 owed more than $100,000 by the retailer.
Following its bankruptcy filing, Saks Global initiated a sweeping restructuring, closing 21 stores—including 18 Saks Fifth Avenues and three Neiman Marcuses. shuttered locations included outposts in Chicago, where Saks had operated since 1929, as well as stores in Costa Mesa, Las Vegas, St. Louis, San Antonio, and McLean, Virginia. The company also closed more than 60 Saks Off 5th and Last Call locations, though the lone international Saks store in Kazakhstan remains open.
As stores were cleared out and remaining inventory heavily discounted, shoppers once again encountered locations stripped of their traditional upscale allure. TikTok filled with videos of grim stores nearing closure, looking more apocalyptic than luxurious.
“Bad news travels faster than good news,” says Cohen, the Circana adviser. “People love to share their war stories of shopping.” And via smartphones, those stories now spread faster than ever before.
As Saks Global restructured to emerge from bankruptcy, an initial infusion of $1.75 billion in new capital allowed suppliers to be paid and merchandise to begin flowing again. In March, Exemplar Luxury Group announced that nearly 600 brands had resumed shipping. A recent visit to the Saks Fifth Avenue flagship across from Rockefeller Center revealed amply stocked sales floors.
According to Exemplar, associates at Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, and Saks Fifth Avenue are seeing higher overall sales this year than during the same period in 2025, though the company declined to specify exact percentages.
Nevertheless, rebuilding trust with both consumers and the fashion industry remains a formidable challenge.
“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 especially, disappointment with service and selection, he says, “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 designers who remain skeptical, Exemplar’s loss may become its competitors’ gain.
“Now more than ever, every brand I know wants to be in Bloomingdale’s,” says an industry insider. “It’s almost like Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom will become what Barneys was in the ’80s.”
Meanwhile, some shoppers have yet to venture back to Saks.
“It’s going to take a while to rebuild my trust,” says Stedman, the longtime Saks shopper. “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 concludes.
