Picture: DST Text: NYTimes
In the mind-set of New Yorkers, Barneys is ineluctably linked with the achingly fashionable, or the utterly pretentious. To its New York department store brethren, Barneys is the cool kid in the class, the one with the magically floppy head of hair, while Bloomingdale's is the head cheerleader and Lord & Taylor, the substitute teacher. To be a Barneys woman is to own expensive shoes, tailored black suits, artfully shredded jeans. A Barneys man owns leather jackets and cashmere sweaters, and if he is the right age, his hair is perfectly seasoned with equal swaths of salt and pepper. He has a tan.