Las Vegas Stores

The store is decadent, natch, but intimate.

You know you're on the map as a great shopping city when Barneys New York opens its most decadent store in years on your main street.

The influential retailer, famous for its kooky window displays and inspired mix of up-and-coming and established designers, has landed at the new Palazzo Las Vegas hotel and casino, boasting more than 80,000 square feet of men's and women's fashion, a collection of commissioned sculptures and decorative artworks and quaint custom furnishings that evoke a kind of "Roman Holiday"/midcentury Italian glamour.

Despite its size, the store harks back to the company's first retail shop on West 17th Street in New York -- which introduced Barneys' magical hybrid of exclusive boutique and swanky department store. Although the Beverly Hills location, comparable in size to the new store, feels more like an enormous Saks or a Neiman's, the Las Vegas store is unmistakably Barneys: intimate and eccentric.

The store anchors the hyper-luxe resort's collection of high-end stores, the Shoppes at the Palazzo. The shops, which include other Vegas firsts such as Tory Burch, Diane Von Furstenberg, Chloe, Anya Hindmarch and Lambertson Truex, will open over the next few months.

But proof of Barneys' top-of-the-heap status is everywhere. Though most of the boutiques are tucked into windowless wings of the casino, Barneys boasts its own expansive front window -- and separate entrance -- on the bustling Strip. Signs pointing the way to the hip fashion emporium are visible from virtually every poker table and slot machine. The Palazzo's developer, the Las Vegas Sands Corp., even extended the gondola-filled Grande Canal in the neighboring Venetian shops up to the new store.

Despite the glitz overload, Barneys was careful to keep its aesthetics decidedly non-Vegas -- striving for a slightly amped-up version of itself (meaning playful mannequin vignettes, free-standing art pieces, custom furnishings and plenty of elbow room).

- Emili Vesilind, L.A. Times Staff Writer (Jan. 27, 2008)