Starting in the late 1960s, Fred Pressman—my dad and the son of Barney Pressman, who in 1923 opened the store that bore his name—presided over the transformation of Barneys into a higher-end, gentler kind of store. In 1970, he opened the International House, offering Pierre Cardin and Yves Saint Laurent from Paris, Bruno Piattelli and Brioni from Rome, and, soon after, the greatest of them all, Giorgio Armani , from Milan.

When Fred maneuvered to steer him into Barneys, he was a start-up—not quite a nobody but a long way from the top. At that time, he barely had a label to speak of; after putting in time behind the scenes of fashion, the 41-year-old designer founded Giorgio Armani S.p.A. out of a two-room office in 1975.

Barneys would invest heavily in Armani, promising tens of thousan

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