Saks Fifth Avenue

Saks Fifth Avenue was founded in 1924 in New York by Horace Saks and Bernard Gimbel (the latter the heir to the Gimbel Brothers department store family) as a luxury-specialty department store on Fifth Avenue at 49th Street — the iconic 10-floor flagship building that has anchored the brand at the same address for over 100 years. The brand was conceived from the outset as a deliberate competitor to the older Bergdorf Goodman and Bonwit Teller luxury-specialty stores, with a positioning that has continuously emphasised contemporary American-and-European luxury fashion. The Saks Fifth Avenue vocabulary settled around several distinguishing things: the iconic 10-floor Fifth Avenue flagship (designed by Starrett & van Vleck, opened 1924, with multiple subsequent renovations including the major Yabu Pushelberg-led 2018 redesign), a buyer-led brand list anchored to every major LVMH, Kering, Richemont, Chanel, and Hermès luxury house plus a particularly strong contemporary-American-designer programme (Khaite, The Row, Toteme, Brock Collection, Carolina Herrera, Oscar de la Renta), the iconic annual Saks Fifth Avenue holiday-window-display programme (a defining New York Christmas cultural moment since 1934), and the long-running Saks 10022-SHOE designated zip-code branding initiative. Saks Fifth Avenue is owned by Hudson's Bay Company, the Canadian retail conglomerate that acquired the brand in 2013 for approximately $2.4 billion. The 2025 major US luxury-retail consolidation brought Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, and the broader Saks Global retail structure under one operational structure. The retailer operates approximately 41 Saks Fifth Avenue stores across the US plus the Saks Off 5th outlet network (approximately 60 locations), plus the Saks Fifth Avenue e-commerce platform serving 80+ countries. The Fifth Avenue flagship has been continuously one of the defining destinations of New York luxury retail since 1924.