Barney's Renovates Beauty Floor

Barneys New York unveiled their new beauty floor concept today, revealing a sleeker look in both the flagship Madison Avenue store and the Beverly Hills store.

The beauty floors are the latest step in Barneys' makeover and a continuation of the retailer's updates.

"The approach we've taken with the rest of the store - which is really to create a very chic, very simple, elegant environment that serves as a backdrop for what we think are the best products in the world - that's what we've done a year ago on the shoe floor," said Mark Lee, chief executive officer. "It's what we've done a year and a half ago on the ground floor. What we've done on the Foundation level, the beauty floor, is really consistent with that."

He also said that a goal of the redesign was to emphasize the Barneys' persona, as opposed to relying on flashy vendor identification that has been prevalent throughout the industry. "We've moved in a direction for the whole store away from shops-in-shop," he said. "We're not in the shop-in-shop business in any category and the beauty floor reflects that as well."

The result is a more timeless look that exudes Barneys' modernism. "We have really been on a quest to create Barneys' environment in terms of our own architecture and our own aesthetic," Lee said. "At the end of the day, what comes out from the design is the products themselves. Ultimately, each brand is also identified by their product, by their packaging, by the colors of their brand and that's what will come out of the neutral environment."