Long before shopping was dictated by digital algorithms, personalized recommendations, and targeted banner ads, it had Saks Fifth Avenue.
For several generations of discerning luxury buyers, the iconic department store served as the ultimate arbiter of elegance, glamour, and impeccably good taste. "Saks is New York," designer Donatella Versace once declared while inside its bustling Midtown Manhattan flagship, but the scope of its cultural and commercial influence extended far beyond the five boroughs. Its sumptuously designed stores across the United States became coveted lifestyle destinations in their own right, drawing locals and travelers alike through their revolving doors.
From Giorgio Armani to Ermenegildo Zegna, Saks carried rack upon rack of enticing, high-end indulgences. Shoppers could browse Oscar de la Renta evening gowns and snakeskin Gucci loafers, classic Montblanc fountain pens and Dior eaux de toilettes, precisely tailored Ralph Lauren suits alongside matching Burberry trench coats for both adults and children. There were Chanel 2.55 handbags, practical yet sophisticated Louis Vuitton briefcases, and, under the store’s own proprietary house label, beautifully crafted pearl necklaces, buttery calfskin gloves, and exceptionally soft cashmere pullovers and cardigans.
"Saks was the reliable destination where you knew you could find whatever you wanted," recalls Julia Stedman, a New York-based brand-strategy consultant who works at the intersection of fashion and technology and shopped at the retailer for decades. "Every luxury brand was there."
Footwear was a particularly powerful strongpoint, especially from highly covetable labels like Manolo Blahnik, Roger Vivier, Jimmy Choo, and Christian Louboutin. At the imposing Manhattan flagship—which has acted as 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 distinction that no other store in the country could claim. In August 2007, the United States Postal Service officially granted the department its own exclusive zip code: 10022-SHOE.
"It was a great shoe department to begin with," Stedman says, reflecting on the era. "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, actress Annette Bening’s character offered a simpler, widely accepted cultural verdict: "Nobody. Hates. Saks." At the time, it would have been hard to disagree with the sentiment.
Over the past few years, however, the company’s storied prestige has taken a severe beating. A combination of mounting financial pressures and managerial missteps, many of which were closely tied to the complex 2024 acquisition of luxury rival Neiman Marcus, ultimately culminated in Saks Global filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January with a staggering $3.4 billion in debt. Following a court-supervised restructuring process, the firm announced in June that it had officially emerged from bankruptcy. Operating with a significantly reduced footprint of stores, the restructured enterprise now goes by the name Exemplar Luxury Group. Whether Saks can fully recover its former industry stature—and win back the deep affection of luxury shoppers—remains an open and heavily debated question.
In the immediate wake of the megadeal, the everyday shopping experience had already visibly deteriorated. Customers increasingly found their once-beloved department stores stocked with sporadic, often 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 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 now frequently shop online directly through brand websites, multi-brand e-commerce platforms, digital marketplaces like Amazon, and resale destinations such as The RealReal. Instead of spending leisurely afternoons browsing physical racks of clothing and receiving personalized styling advice from trusted, long-tenured sales associates, contemporary shoppers find much of their style inspiration through social media feeds. Furthermore, tailored suits and men’s neckwear no longer anchor everyday professional wardrobes the way they once did, a shift that accelerated significantly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The classic grand-department-store model—featuring floor after cavernous floor packed densely with inventory—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 prominent market research 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 finalized its purchase of Neiman Marcus in December 2024, warning signs were flashing. Some independent fashion houses sensed trouble as familiar retail buyers and experienced floor salespeople began turning over at an unsettling, rapid 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 trunk shows at various 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 to be entirely accurate, and the debt-laden acquisition helped saddle Saks Global with so much financial liability that the company fell severely behind on paying for merchandise. Eventually, many fashion and beauty brands felt they had no choice left other than to stop shipping 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 specialized financing firm that guarantees payments for roughly 180 fashion and beauty brands carried across Saks Global’s retail network, including notable names 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," Wassner adds. "It was quite noticeable, particularly as the days wore on."
"My floor looked so bad," echoes Berger, the former St. Louis salesperson. "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 the sales floor in stark ways. "We never had a full size run of dresses," recalls Babatunde Fakuade, who worked for nearly a year as a salesperson at the Neiman Marcus store in Lenox Square, Atlanta. "We would get a size 2, a 12, an 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 company 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," notes Fakuade, who ultimately left Neiman Marcus to pursue a career as a retail business consultant.
The cash-flow complications actually predated the Neiman Marcus acquisition. Saks Global had combined Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus stores, Bergdorf Goodman, Horchow, and the off-price discount chains Saks Off 5th and Last Call. However, Saks entered the broader consolidation deal already carrying substantial debt, much of it directly linked to its 2013 purchase by Hudson’s Bay Company, a historic Canadian retailer with corporate roots dating all the way back to 1670.
Certain early corporate maneuvers raised eyebrows within the financial community. The Fifth Avenue flagship building was mortgaged in 2014 for approximately $1.2 billion, which necessitated 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 sum widely rumored to be far lower than the purchase price. Other corporate investments added still more recurring financial obligations to the increasingly cash-strapped company.
"There were a lot of prior Hudson’s Bay issues—leases and bonds—that Saks, through corporate succession, became obligated on," explains Lorenzo Marinuzzi, a partner at the law firm Morrison & Foerster, which represents Saks Global’s unsecured creditors, including major luxury houses like Chanel and LVMH.
Hudson’s Bay Company’s inherited financial baggage did little to soothe jittery vendors who were waiting anxiously 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 subsequently filed for bankruptcy and ultimately shuttered all of its remaining stores.
As the operations of Saks Global began to unravel, many industry observers directed their criticisms toward Richard Baker, who had served as Hudson’s Bay Company’s governor, executive chairman, and CEO, and later became the executive chairman of Saks Global. Baker’s professional background is deeply rooted in real estate, and critics argued that his overarching approach to managing retail department stores frequently emphasized property speculation and high-stakes dealmaking over the traditional craft of retailing, such as cultivating relationships with designers of finely tailored suits or evening dresses. Baker notably acquired Lord & Taylor in 2006 using extensive financing, subsequently sold its iconic Fifth Avenue building to WeWork in 2017, and later sold the retail operations to Le Tote in 2019 before the physical brick-and-mortar locations were permanently closed in 2020.
This strategic orientation was reflected in Saks Global’s own corporate communications. A July 2024 press release announcing the planned Neiman Marcus purchase proudly described the newly formed entity as "a combination of world-class luxury retail and real-estate assets." Upon finalizing the deal, Baker stated that the overarching business plan was "to redefine the luxury shopping experience" through, 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 multi-brand transaction was first 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 bankruptcy protection, many of those very stores instead featured thinly stocked sales floors and demoralized, disgruntled employees.
Baker officially departed from Saks Global in January. Today, his public focus appears to be centered once again on real estate, as highlighted by regular posts on his personal Instagram account, where his biography proudly describes him as being "Behind $Billions in Real Estate." When contacted for an interview for this story, Baker provided a brief response: "No comment on Saks at this time." Executives at Exemplar Luxury Group also declined repeated requests to make leadership available for comment.
When Saks Global formally filed for bankruptcy protection, the total sums owed to some of the world’s most powerful luxury conglomerates 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 portfolio includes La Mer, Jo Malone London, Le Labo, and Tom Ford.
While those financial losses are undeniably vast, global luxury giants possess a significant cushion: they operate their own standalone boutiques, maintain profitable counters in competing department stores, and enjoy immense international reach. For independent brands with smaller operating footprints, however, 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 independent beauty brand that was carried at Neiman Marcus. "Finances are not just endless."
Her beauty company 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 stream, the brand’s small management team was forced to halt contracts with several freelance workers it heavily relied upon. One key manager ultimately left to take another job elsewhere. The company is now attempting to painstakingly rebuild its retail distribution network and consumer base through alternative vendors.
She is one of several sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the tightly knit nature of the fashion and beauty industries. Many former Saks Global staffers approached for this story noted that they had signed strict nondisclosure agreements or were currently involved in active litigation regarding unpaid wages or severance—and therefore declined to speak on the record.
The independent beauty brand was far from alone in being forced to make drastic operational sacrifices to survive without expected revenue.
"You have to keep going," explains an executive at another beauty label that is 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 carried by Saks, the fallout included canceling a major runway show—resulting in the total loss of the substantial deposit placed on the event space—according to a marketing executive familiar with the situation.
A senior executive at another lauded fashion label states that missing payments severely constrained the company’s ability to pay for essential raw materials like fabrics and buttons, manufacturing production costs, staff salaries, and external contractors such as public relations agencies and independent consultants. The company ultimately had to resort to laying off 20 percent of its total workforce as a direct result of what he 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 currently owed several hundred thousand dollars and has received just one full payment for collections spanning across 2024 and 2025, he notes. On certain invoices, he claims, the brand was paid mere pennies on the dollar. The executive expects that the company will ultimately recover only about 20 percent of the total amount it is legally owed.
The operational breakdown typically began with delayed disbursements, which eventually snowballed 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, his formal appeals for payment were frequently routed to administrative representatives located in Bengaluru, India, where Saks Global had centralized various corporate 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 correspondence, he notes that the brand’s name was not even spelled correctly.
"You’re trying to explain to India how you work," says Wingate, the independent designer who previously sold his collections at 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 the money he is owed, but says he still maintains "six figures of open invoices that haven’t been paid."
Perhaps inevitably, independent brands have faced a much more arduous path toward recovering funds compared to industry marquee names. According to a source familiar with Saks Global’s vendor payment tracking, many of the world-renowned luxury houses carried across Saks, Neiman Marcus, and Bergdorf Goodman have successfully recovered at least half of the debt they were owed by the retailer.
Some prominent designer brands have reportedly been paid everything they are owed, or close to it, according to the source. The specific terms of these private settlements have been kept under close guard, largely because rival brands would instantly demand comparable deals. Brands operating strictly under a concession or consignment model have managed to recover close to the full amounts they were owed.
Representatives for Chanel, Kering, LVMH, and the Estée Lauder Companies did not reply to requests for comment regarding how much of their outstanding Saks debt they have successfully recovered.
The designers whose accounts are managed by Hilldun were collectively owed more than $66 million by Saks Global, though just under half of that total debt was tied to shipments that Hilldun had not formally guaranteed. Wassner reports that his firm has paid its client brands virtually all of the approved debt, with the exception of a small number of vendors whose invoices are still undergoing active reconciliation.
Some independent brands had already weathered painful payment disputes leading up to Neiman Marcus’s previous 2020 bankruptcy before encountering Saks Global’s more recent financial collapse.
"We gave up," says an executive who runs a tastemaker-approved unisex grooming brand that was sold at both Neiman Marcus 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 owed more than $100,000 by the retailer.
Following its bankruptcy filing earlier this year, Saks Global initiated a rigorous corporate restructuring. The company permanently closed 21 brick-and-mortar stores—comprising 18 Saks Fifth Avenue locations and three Neiman Marcus stores. The casualties included historic outposts 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. The company also shuttered more than 60 Saks Off 5th and Last Call discount stores. (The lone international Saks outpost, located in Kazakhstan, remains operational.)
As the physical stores were cleared of merchandise and remaining inventory was heavily marked down, shoppers once again encountered Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus sales floors stripped of the upscale allure that had historically defined them. Social media platforms like TikTok quickly filled with viral videos depicting grim, nearly empty stores nearing their final closure dates, creating an atmosphere that felt more apocalyptic than luxurious.
"Bad news travels faster than good news," notes Cohen, the Circana adviser. "People love to share their war stories of shopping." Thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones, those negative consumer accounts now travel faster and wider than ever before.
As Exemplar Luxury Group restructured to emerge from bankruptcy protection, an initial influx of $1.75 billion in fresh capital allowed suppliers to finally be paid and merchandise to begin flowing back into the distribution pipeline. In March, Exemplar announced that nearly 600 brands had formally resumed shipping products. During a recent walk through the Saks Fifth Avenue flagship situated directly across from Rockefeller Center, the store appeared amply and properly stocked across its various retail floors.
According to Exemplar, sales associates working across Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, and Saks Fifth Avenue are currently seeing higher overall sales figures this year compared to the same period in 2025, though the company declined to disclose the specific percentage of growth.
Even so, successfully rebuilding long-term trust with both discerning consumers and the broader fashion industry is far from guaranteed.
"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, negative experiences with compromised customer service and depleted product selections, he says, "creates a bit of a doom loop that you really have to get out of."
The core strategic 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 company, Exemplar’s ongoing reputational loss may ultimately become 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, some longtime shoppers have yet to venture back through the doors of Saks.
"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."
She adds, "I’m going to take a wait-and-see approach and see what happens with them."
