The Fall of Saks: What Happened to An American Icon

Long before shopping had an algorithm, it had Saks Fifth Avenue.

For several generations of luxury buyers, Saks was the arbiter of elegance, glamour, and impeccably good taste. “Saks is New York,” Donatella Versace once declared inside its Midtown flagship, but its influence extended far beyond Manhattan. Its sumptuous stores across the country became destinations in their own right.

From Armani to Zegna, Saks carried rack upon rack of enticing indulgences: Oscar de la Renta gowns and snakeskin Gucci loafers, Montblanc fountain pens and Dior eaux de toilettes, precisely tailored Ralph Lauren suits and matching Burberry trench coats for adults and children, Chanel 2.55 handbags and Louis Vuitton briefcases, and, under its own house label, 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’ve been hard to disagree.

Over the past few years, however, the company’s prestige has taken a 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—is 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, Mo., which had loyal clients for more than half a century.

To be fair, department stores have been under pressure for years. People now shop online from store sites, brands themselves, Amazon, and the RealReal. Instead of afternoons spent browsing racks of clothing and getting advice from trusted salespeople, shoppers find inspiration from social media. Suits and men’s ties no longer anchor everyday wardrobes as they once did, especially after Covid. And the classic grand-department-store model—floor after cavernous floor packed with merchandise—might 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.” “Then,” he adds, “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.

“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. She had already left 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 a few months ago 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 that dated to 1670. Some early 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 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 Bay’s Company filed for bankruptcy last year and eventually closed all its stores.

Customers would come in and say, ‘Are you closing? This looks like Saks on 5th.’

As Saks Global began to unravel, many observers pointed their fingers at Richard Baker, who was Hudson’s Bay Company’s governor, executive chairman, and C.E.O. and 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, say, the craftsmanship of a beautifully made suit or a designer evening dress. He bought Lord & Taylor in 2006 with extensive financing, then later sold its building to WeWork in 2017 and its retail operation to Le Tote in 2019; the brick-and-mortar stores subsequently closed in 2020.

The shift showed up in Saks Global’s own 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 had 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 in regular posts on his Instagram account, whose bio describes him as “Behind $Billions in Real Estate.” Baker’s response to a request for an interview for this story was, “No comment on Saks at this time.” Exemplar Luxury Group also declined repeated requests to make executives available for this article.

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, it owed more than $136 million to Chanel; roughly $60 million to Kering, owner of Gucci, Saint Laurent, and Bottega Veneta; about $30 million to Richemont, 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.

Those losses are undeniably vast, but global giants have some cushion: their own boutiques, other department-store counters, and immense international reach. For brands with smaller footprints, late or missing payments can be 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.”

Her brand has still not received the “six figures” it is owed for orders shipped to the retailer, despite having filed legal paperwork seeking to recover at least part of it. Without that income, the brand’s small management team was forced to stop contracting several freelancers it relied upon. One manager left for another job. The company is now trying to rebuild its retail network and customer base with other vendors.

She is one of several sources who spoke under the condition of anonymity in an industry where everyone knows everyone. Many former Saks Global staffers approached for this story said that they had signed nondisclosure agreements or were in litigation over money they are owed—and declined to comment.

The beauty brand was hardly alone in making sacrifices to keep operating without payments it had expected to receive.

“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 at Saks, the fallout included canceling a runway show—and losing the deposit on that event space—according to a marketing executive who was aware of the proceedings.

A senior executive at another lauded fashion label says missing payments have affected its ability to pay for fabric and buttons, production, staff, and contractors such as a public-relations firm and consultants. The company resorted to laying off 20 percent of its staff because of, as he puts it, “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 across 2024 and 2025, he says. On some invoices, he says, it was paid pennies on the dollar. The executive expects the company will eventually receive about 20 percent of what it is owed.

The problems began with delayed payments, which snowballed into a 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, his appeals for payment were routed to representatives in Bengaluru (formerly known as Bangalore), India, where Saks Global was handling 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 adds, the brand’s name was not even spelled correctly.

“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 used a collection agency to get part of the money he is owed, but still has, he says, “six figures of open invoices that haven’t been paid.”

Perhaps inevitably, independent brands have had a harder time getting paid than marquee names. According to a source familiar with Saks Global’s payments to vendors, many of the world-renowned luxury brands carried by Saks, Neimans, and Bergdorf Goodman have received at least half of what they were owed by Saks Global.

Some well-known designer brands have been paid everything they are owed, or close to it, according to the source. The terms have been kept closely guarded, in large part because competitors would insist on comparable deals. Brands operating on a concession or consignment model have recovered close to what they were owed.

Chanel, Kering, LVMH, and the Estée Lauder Companies did not reply to requests to comment on how much of their Saks debt they have recovered.

They promised to pay you if you would ship to them again, but I wasn’t taking that risk.

The designers that Hilldun works with were owed more than $66 million by Saks Global, though just under half of that debt was for shipments Hilldun had not guaranteed. Wassner says that the company has paid its clients virtually all of the approved debt, with the exception of a few vendors whose invoices are still being reconciled.

Some brands had already weathered payment problems leading up to Neiman Marcus’s 2020 bankruptcy before encountering Saks Global’s more recent troubles.

“We gave up,” says an executive who runs a tastemaker-approved unisex grooming brand that was 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, he says.

After filing for bankruptcy this year, Saks Global began restructuring in earnest. It closed 21 stores—18 Saks Fifth Avenues and three Neiman Marcuses—including outposts in Chicago, where Saks had operated since 1929, as well as Costa Mesa, Las Vegas, St. Louis, San Antonio, and McLean, Va. It also closed more than 60 Saks Off 5th and Last Call stores. (The lone overseas Saks, in Kazakhstan, remains open.)

As stores were cleared out and inventory marked down, shoppers once again encountered Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus stores stripped of the upscale allure that had defined them. TikTok filled with videos of grim stores nearing closure that looked 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, thanks to smartphones, that news now travels faster than ever.

As Saks Global restructured to emerge from bankruptcy, an initial $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. On a recent walk through the Saks Fifth Avenue flagship across from Rockefeller Center, the store appeared amply stocked across its 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 would not say by how much.

Still, rebuilding trust with both consumers and the fashion industry is no guarantee.

“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 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 competitiors’ gain.

“Now more than ever, every brand I know wants to be in Bloomingdales,” says an industry insider. “It’s almost like Bloomingdales 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 says.