If you’ve walked past the empty Barneys New York building in Chelsea in recent years, you may have thought, We don’t shop like we used to.
Remember when going to a New York department store was an event? A pastime? Something you did with friends and partners. You could spend an entire Saturday afternoon roaming the floors, immersed in a guided tour of taste, discovering designers, chatting with “your” salesperson, getting a friend’s honest opinion about those Prada platform sandals in between gossip sprints. Whether or not you ever bought anything at Barneys, just being there was joyful.
