Saks Fifth Avenue revealed its new women’s flagship Beverly Hills boutique, which is viewed as the cornerstone to a proposed mixed-use redevelopment under parent HBC.
The store, located at the former home of Barneys on Wilshire Boulevard, spans roughly 130,000 square feet across six floors.
More than 25 labels new to that location are now part of the mix, along with shop in shops from Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Dior and Gucci among other brands.
The retailer’s personal shopper and styling service, Fifth Avenue Club, has an expanded home with 15 private suites and an outdoor terrace on the building’s top floor.
Saks Fifth Avenue stores President Larry Bruce said in a statement the new store is “resetting the gold standard of luxury shopping in Beverly Hills.”
Bruce added the new space creates a regional flagship that makes it a “lifestyle-centric shopping destination.”
It’s a fitting description given parent HBC’s plans for the two-block, 3.4-acre site of which the new women’s store serves as the anchor.
The 5,000-square-foot shoe department. PHOTO BY PETER CHRISTIANSEN VALLI FOR SAKS FIFTH AVENUE. More than 25 brands new to the Beverly Hills location have been added to the store’s assortment. PHOTO BY PETER CHRISTIANSEN VALLI FOR SAKS FIFTH AVENUE. The contemporary brands department. PHOTO BY PETER CHRISTIANSEN VALLI FOR SAKS FIFTH AVENUE. The store includes several designer shop-in-shops. PHOTO BY PETER CHRISTIANSEN VALLI FOR SAKS FIFTH AVENUE. The beauty department. PHOTO BY PETER CHRISTIANSEN VALLI FOR SAKS FIFTH AVENUE. The jewelry department. PHOTO BY PETER CHRISTIANSEN VALLI FOR SAKS FIFTH AVENUE. A private viewing room for jewelry clients. PHOTO BY PETER CHRISTIANSEN VALLI FOR SAKS FIFTH AVENUE. PHOTO BY PETER CHRISTIANSEN VALLI FOR SAKS FIFTH AVENUE. The new, expanded Fifth Avenue Club located on the building’s top floor. PHOTO BY PETER CHRISTIANSEN VALLI FOR SAKS FIFTH AVENUE. The outdoor terrace for Fifth Avenue Club shoppers. PHOTO BY PETER CHRISTIANSEN VALLI FOR SAKS FIFTH AVENUE.
HBC’s Evolution
HBC Properties and Investments in 2022 revealed a five-year plan for the area, known as 9600 Wilshire, to create a branded mixed-use experience. The vision includes office space, luxury apartments and a boutique hotel of no more than 50 rooms with ground floor restaurants.
“The 9600 Wilshire project is an exciting and important step on our journey to build a future-facing holding company of luxury online and brick-and-mortar retail, high-end real estate and an intellectual property incubator that launches new businesses such as our growing, global flexible office offering,” said Richard Baker at the time of the plan’s reveal.
Baker is HBC governor, executive chair and CEO.
HBC is a holding company that owns the e-commerce and brick-and-mortar operations of Saks, Saks Off 5th, The Bay and Hudson’s Bay. In more recent years, the companies were broken off into separate entities for e-commerce and physical retail. Hudson’s Bay sold its Lord & Taylor business unit for $100 million to Le Tote in 2019, with the department store retailer filing for bankruptcy the following year.
Development firm Streetworks Development is also part of the HBC group, while HBC holds a majority stake in office operating company Convene.
The reorganization and complexity now of business divisions have led some to wonder what Baker’s long-term outlook is for the retail business alone.
“I don’t like to close any stores, and we’ve closed a very small number of stores in the chain in the past decade, but some are too big,” Baker told The Globe and Mail in March 2023.
HBC had previously been traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange but was taken private in 2020, making it difficult to get a read on how the business has been performing in recent years.
Baker told The Globe and Mail in that same March interview physical and online retail sales were up in the U.S. on account of the run up in luxury spending.
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