This week, as New York Fashion Week kicks off, we spoke with several brands about how wholesale retail is factoring into their growth plans and, in the wake of Saks Global’s bankruptcy, what role department stores can still play in the fashion industry.
The American department store’s reputation has taken a beating in the last year. The high-profile bankruptcy of Saks Global, along with struggling foot traffic at department stores like Neiman Marcus, has made the prospect of wholesale via this channel a tougher sell.
But on the first day of New York Fashion Week, designers at high-end brands were still positive about the role of wholesale retail in helping a fashion brand grow.
Jane Siskin, creative director of the New York-based brand Cinq à Sept, told Glossy that wholesale has been and remains a crucial part of the business. She said, despite any of the recent negative news about department stores, their role in fashion remains unchanged.
“For us, having department stores as partners has made a huge difference,” Siskin told Glossy ahead of Cinq à Sept’s show on Wednesday afternoon. “No matter what anyone says, they still confer a lot of brand credibility. The customer who shops at Saks shops there because they trust them to have great brands.”
Cinq à Sept is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, and it has been a wholesale-first business since the beginning. Siskin also co-founded the apparel brands 7 For All Mankind and Elizabeth & James, both of which were also originally established as wholesale businesses.
For brands of a certain price point, Siskin said, wholesale is essential. Cinq à Sept’s prices align with the contemporary market, with a single pair of jeans selling for under $300. Since it sits at a lower price point, it needs scale to make up for thinner margins, and that scale is much easier to achieve with the guaranteed income from a wholesale store buying a large order. Cinq à Sept generates over $100 million annually, primarily from wholesale, with additional revenue from its online channels and three owned stores; two more stores are opening this year.
“DTC is expensive,” Siskin said. “Your own stores are expensive. Digital marketing, which is a big part of DTC, is expensive.”
Cinq à Sept is carried at a number of major American fashion retailers, including Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s. The performance of these retailers has been mixed. According to data provided to Glossy by Placer.ai for January, foot traffic to Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale’s increased 1.2% and 2.5% year over year, respectively. Meanwhile, Neiman Marcus saw its foot traffic fall by 10.5% in the same period.
Despite the negativity around Saks Global, some department stores are showing signs of growth and recovery. Over the summer, Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom’s sales reportedly rose by more than 10% each. Even as Saks Global closes eight Saks locations and one Neiman Marcus location, Cinq à Sept is among several brands signaling continued support for Saks as a partner.
“I have a lot of confidence in them, and we are going to do everything we can to support them,” Siskin said. “We have a big business at Saks, at Nordstrom and at Bloomingdale’s, and a healthy specialty store business. All of them are important to the fashion ecosystem.”
L’Agence, another brand showing at NYFW on Wednesday that also sells in all the major American department stores like Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom, was similarly positive about the power of wholesale.
“We are a global brand with global wholesale relationships that are core to our business,” L’Agence CEO Jonny Saven told Glossy. “They have always been a fundamental way that our customers discover our products and feed our larger brand ecosystem.”
Elsewhere at NYFW, the newly rebranded Italian fashion house Sergio Soldano was using wholesale as a launching point for a new era. The brand has been around for over half a century, dressing Hollywood royalty like Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly, and was one of the first to show at Milan Fashion Week.
But Sergio Soldano hasn’t had a major presence beyond its fragrance line in the U.S. in decades. That may soon change under the creative leadership of designers Dario Di Bella and Giovanni Premoli, who joined the brand in 2024. On Wednesday evening, the designers teamed up with Printemps New York to present Sergio Soldano’s first womenswear couture collection in decades and its first-ever New York presentation, upstairs in Printemps’ Manhattan showroom.
Premoli and Di Bella showed off a small sample of the collection in November at a space owned by JSquared Group, a fashion sales agency, but the Printemps presentation marks the brand’s official U.S. debut. The clothes will be available for sale at Printemps in two weeks.
“For me, Printemps is the top,” Di Bella told Glossy before the presentation. “It’s luxury, it’s beautiful, it has a connection to Europe. As soon as they saw the sketches of the collection, they understood the heritage of the brand. So for us, it’s a good fit.”
Maryanne Grisz, the president and CEO of the century-old fashion non-profit Fashion Group International, was the one to connect the Sergio Soldano designers with Printemps. She told Glossy that the fashion industry is always changing and that brands should only pursue department stores if it’s truly a match for their customer.
“Retail is evolving right now,” she said. “Specialty stores are having a strong moment, DTC is still viable, and department stores are appealing based on the brand. If the brand feels that’s where its customers are, then that’s where it should go. But it’s a rapidly evolving landscape.”
Printemps has focused on introducing European brands, such as Sergio Soldano, to the U.S. market since opening its New York store in March of last year. It introduced the French brand Joseph Duclos, which was worn by the kings of France in decades past but was unavailable in the U.S. until it began selling at Printemps. For European brands looking to break into the U.S. market, Printemps is an attractive partner.
Printemps’ North American CEO, Thierry Prevost, told Glossy that he tries to ensure every partnership between Printemps and its brands is mutually beneficial and unique. When he took over as CEO in May of last year, brands reached out, saying they would start selling in New York specifically because of their existing relationship with Prevost, formed when he was the general manager of Printemps in Doha, Qatar.
“For me, any partnership with a brand has to be win-win, and it has to be more than just the margin and the top-line,” Prevost said. “There has to be something unique we can do with marketing — some product exclusives we can do, some events we can do. When I speak about partnership, it has to be a real partnership. If you want to make a long-term business, that’s the key.”
News to know
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- EssilorLuxottica continues to profit from its Meta AI glasses, with sales of the AI-powered wearable tech tripling in 2025 compared to 2024. The company said it sold over 7 million pairs of glasses last year.
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