Dubai buying Barneys

If you want to be technical, it's an affiliate of Istithmar, a private equity investment house controlled by the government of Dubai. Purchase price is $825 million, which is more than twice what seller Jones Apparel paid for the high-priced, high-fashion clothing retailer in 2004. Its three flagship stores are in NY, Bev Hills and Chicago, but other units have been added around the country. There's plenty of lore about the chain (founder Barney Pressman pawned his wife’s engagement ring to start it 84 years ago). Here's more from the NYT:

Barneys, founded in 1923 as an off-price men’s suit store, has become a prized asset in fashion, renowned — and at times parodied — for sparse displays, obscure designers and aloof sales clerks. Reviewing the store in The Times last year, Alex Kucynski wrote that “To its New York department store brethren, Barneys is the cool kid in the class, the one with the magically floppy head of hair, while Bloomingdale’s is the head cheerleader and Lord & Taylor, the substitute teacher.”

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The modern Barneys took shape under the control of his son, Fred, who discovered little-known designers in London and Milan and began to arrange clothes in the store with an eye toward the jet-set crowd. But the retailer ran into trouble in the 1980s, when Fred Pressman’s sons, Bob and Gene, began opening Barneys big anchor stores around the country under a partnership with the Isetan Company of Japan. Excesses became common. When Barneys opened its best-known flagship store on Madison Avenue in 1993, it decorated an entire department with goatskin and installed Carrara marble tiles on the main floor.