The Story Behind Barneys Iconic Beverly Hills Launch (Excerpt)

We had an amazing party to bring Barneys to Beverly Hills before the store opened in 1994, thrown by Lisa Eisner, one of my oldest friends in the business, and the fairy godmother of all fashion aspirants in L.A. Lisa had been a Mademoiselle editor; she and Lyssa Horn, Steve’s daughter, worked together there and were like sisters. In the ’80s, they both ended up in Paris, where Lisa worked for Vogue and Lyssa ran Barneys’ Paris office, the advance guard for all of our activities in France, from setting up showroom appointments with fledgling designers at their little garrets to booking out Chez Omar, my favorite Lebanese restaurant in the Marais, for the dinners we’d throw during the collections. There, too: discretion. You’ll never find pictures of a Lebanese belly dancer gyrating on