Gene Pressman’s memoir of his time working for the legendary New York Department store Barneys founded by his grandfather, comes when the authors helps open its vast new outpost on Madison Avenue in 1993. The luxury store, complete with mosaic floors, custom-made furniture, saltwater fish tanks, a restaurant and floors of beauty, jewellery and clothes.

Pressman writes “ The store is amazing. It’s hard to be humble knowing stores just didn’t look like this – not anymore”. Barney’s had, he says, “gone back to the past to the grand  department stores just didn’t look like this – not anymore. Barney’s had gone back ot he past, to the grand department stores of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, back when they were glamorous”.

Today the department store is often decreed to be dead. This isn’t totally true – many cities have lost their Dingles or Debenhams but behemoths like Harrods, Liberty and Galeries Lafayette survive and even thrive- yet these venerable institutions are viewed with heavy nostalgia. 

Pressman is the third generation scion trying to expand on the legacy of the original Barney, who created his first store downtown selling old stock of men’ suits, and the civilised Fred- Barney’s son and Gene’s father- who fineness the offering into a discerning menswear emporium. Gene’s proposal to increase the glamour, bring in womenswear and expand the store’s footprint both in New York and abroad, in tandem with his little brother Bob, who oversees the finances. 

Pressman treats us to glimpses of fun: Madonna upstaging Iman at an Aids Fundraiser, Tom Cruise canoodling heavily with his first wife.

The internet altered 21^st century shopping, as nobody claims that an app has the same romance as a gilded store, and nobody thinks that ecommerce, especially in the luxury sector has got it totally right. 

Pressman writes “Some stores are finding fresh success by espousing similar ideals, by developing a unique point of view, cultivating the customer experience, managing scale. You don’t give the customer what they want, You give them what they don’t know they want yet”.

They All Came to Barneys: A Personal History of the World’s Greatest Store by Gene Pressman, Viking $32, 400 pages