Phyllis Pressman, the matriarch of the family that founded Barneys New York, the discount men’s clothing store turned luxury emporium, and creator of Chelsea Passage, the store’s home goods bazaar, a pivotal point in its evolution from a suit merchant to an elite lifestyle. giant: died Tuesday in Palm Beach, Florida. She was 95 years old.
His son Gene Pressman announced his death, in a hospice center.
Barneys was always a family affair. It is named after Barney Pressman, who in 1923 pawned his wife’s ring, at her encouragement, for $500 to buy the lease on a small store on Seventh Avenue and 17th Street in Manhattan. There he built an empire selling designer suits at discounted prices. His son, Fred, who took over in the 1950s, transformed the place into a high-end men’s fashion store that included European designers.
Phyllis Pressman, who was married to Fred, began working at the store so she could spend more time with him. Her first intervention was to design the windows, which seemed boring to her, adding mannequins and whimsical objects such as paper mache dogs. She then began adorning the interior of the store with antiques, jewelry and household items, as well as with objects and textiles she found on her trips to the Marché aux Puces in Paris and Portobello Road in London.
In the late 1970s, Fred Pressman covered an alley adjacent to his property on the 17th Street side with a skylight and gave it to his wife to fill with household items. They called it Chelsea Passage.
Mrs. Pressman’s eye was impeccable and her tastes Catholic. She carried surrealist decorative objects by Italian designer Piero Fornasetti and pieces by English Art Deco ceramist Clarice Cliff. She had teapots with roses by Mary Rose Young, as well as hand-painted cushions, twig placemats and antique jewelry. She sold cutlery, stemware and linens, arranging the pieces on antique furniture (marble-topped butcher tables, rattan sofas, Art Deco bars) which, because customers requested it, she began selling as well. She sold Li-Lac chocolates in display cases designed by the young Peter Marino.
As Chelsea Passage grew, so did Barneys. Fred Pressman’s sons, Gene and Robert, transformed the place as their father had, overseeing the creation in the mid-1980s of a women’s store with interiors designed by Mr. Marino, Andrée Putman, Jean-Paul Beaujard et al.
Chelsea Passage took up the entire first floor like an attractive souk.
Pressman sought out unique, handmade items and worked with artisans to create pieces to his specifications, adjusting the blade of a knife or the height and shape of a glass. He had jewelry designers make napkin rings. She was the first to sell works by the exuberant designer Jonathan Adler, who taught pottery in the evenings, and with his commissions she turned him into a full-time production potter. “I wouldn’t exist without her,” Adler said by phone.
She was adamant about exclusives. If artisans started selling elsewhere, she would leave them in Chelsea Passage.
She was demanding and exacting, a perfectionist and a completionist, recalled Lisa Barr, who was hired as an employee and rose to become senior vice president of Chelsea Passage. When Pressman decided that Chelsea Passage would add gourmet foods like imported teas, he sent Barr to tea school at Mariage Frères in Paris, the centuries-old tea importer.
“I want people to feel like they’re shopping in someone’s home,” Simon Doonan remembers her telling him when Gene Pressman appointed him the store’s display manager in the mid-1980s; He would go on to be the long-time creative director and creator of his naughty showcases.
“Chelsea Passage was an incredible mix of gorgeous modern furniture mixed with Art Deco ceramics, Italian futurism and flea market finds,” Doonan said. “And it was unlike any of the other department stores of the time, which were all chrome and easy-to-clean Formica display spaces. “He was nuanced and visionary.”
Pressman “really understood the art of selecting luxury objects of desire for the home,” Wendy Goodman, design editor of New York magazine, said by email. “Things you never knew you wanted but you wanted. “Chelsea Passage always made me want to write a story called ‘Things I’ll Never Have.’”
Phyllis Ruth Epstein was born on January 17, 1929 in Queens. Her father, Mortimer Epstein, worked as a wholesaler in the textile industry; her mother, Dorothy (Schapiro) Epstein, had been a child actress.
Phyllis grew up in New York City until her parents divorced when she was 10, after which her mother remarried and moved the family to Lawrence, New York, on Long Island. Phyllis attended Parsons College, a private liberal arts college in Iowa that has since closed, and the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut.
When she was 19, she was set up on a blind date with Fred Pressman. They married a year later and settled on Fifth Avenue before moving to Harrison, New York, in Westchester County.
In the early 1990s, the Pressmans began another expansion, partnering with the Isetan Company, a Japanese retail titan, to open Barneys stores across the country and famously build an extravagant limestone-clad flagship on Madison Avenue. between 60th and 61st streets. But in early 1996, the empire began to crumble and Barneys filed for bankruptcy. Fred Pressman died that summer.
Mrs. Pressman, her sons and daughters, Elizabeth Neubardt and Nancy Dressler, who had worked in the family business most of their lives, remained until 1998. But relations between the siblings had become strained. Robert Pressman, who oversaw the company’s finances, was successfully sued by his sisters for mishandling the family trust.
In addition to her children, Mrs. Pressman is survived by 11 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. In 2001, she married Joseph Gurwin, who made her fortune, much of which she donated, manufacturing specialized textiles such as those used in bulletproof vests. Gurwin died in 2009.
Barneys changed hands many times over the next few decades, slowly losing its prestige with each iteration. In 2019, bankrupt again, it closed permanently.
Barney Pressman had a motto: “Select, don’t settle.” During her long marriage to Fred, Pressman developed a tradition of giving her engraved gifts (cufflinks, charms, keychains), all emblazoned with the phrase “I’m so glad I made the choice and didn’t settle.”