Barneys Gets Its Groove Back

The luxury retailer goes hippie for the holidays.

Sure, U.S. retail sales might have just dropped by a record 2.4 percent in October, with clothiers among the hardest hit, but things are still groovy, right? That’s the message, anyway, of this season’s window display at Barneys New York, where the theme is “Peace and Love: Have a Hippie Holiday.”

According to Simon Doonan, the creative director of Barneys, it wasn’t blithe disregard for the global financial crisis that led to the sixties-centric interiors, which include mannequins bedecked in scarf-turbans, flouncy bell-bottoms, and, naturally, peace signs. (The ubiquitous symbol, which was created by Gerald Holtom for a nuclear-disarmament campaign, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.) Instead, Doonan mined the era’s socially conscious side, with sustainably manufactured clothing on display and a custom-painted Volkswagen New Beetle parked in front. As he puts it, “It’s a very fertile period that everybody gets to groove on.”


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