Neal J. Fox Discusses His Storied Career in Luxury Retailing

Just after Saks Global purchased the Neiman Marcus Group and vendors weren’t getting paid for shipments, Neal Fox saw the writing on the wall.

“At the current burn rate, they’ll run out of cash. The numbers just don’t work,” Fox said during a breakfast meeting at Three Guys diner on the Upper East Side of Manhattan last fall. “You can see the inventories are not in good shape.”

He was among the few industry professionals predicting with certainty that Saks would go bust well before it actually happened.

Days after the March 2025 opening of Printemps in Manhattan, he and his wife Martha Kramer entered the store. “There were hardly any shoppers but I felt it was an artistic success,” Fox said, commenting on the French emporium’s stained glass panels, frescos, and vintage-looking Art Nouveau tiles. “There’s a lot there that’s very appealing to the eye, and the size of the shoe salon in the Red Room and the bars and restaurants are impressive, but there’s not much apparel.”

At age 95, Fox’s passion for the industry, curiosity, ability to read the tea leaves and persistence hasn’t waned. Running NJF Associates, he’s been advising brands on business development. “I am still working on launching Lincoln Fox, a luxury handbag concept, but trying to raise funds to get it up and running,” Fox told WWD.

It’s been a distinguished, 70-plus-year journey in luxury retailing filled with achievements and shining moments, from his early days being mentored and learning the ropes of luxury retailing to modernizing and growing dormant brands and leading groups buying businesses. Fox held top jobs at Brooks Brothers, Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, I. Magnin, Sulka, Mark Cross, Garfinckel’s and Raleigh’s, in a career intersecting with such industry legends as Stanley Marcus, Ira Neimark and Philip Hawley of Carter Hawley Hale, as well as Hubert Givenchy, Zandra Rhodes, Jean Muir, Prince Rainier and Princess Grace.

The Bronx native worked at a Fifth Avenue shoe store while attending Baruch College. He earned a bachelor’s of business administration and later a master of science degree in retail, attending night courses at New York University. “I fell in love with retail.”

While a senior in college, Brooks Brothers and Bloomingdale’s offered him jobs. “I opted for Brooks Brothers because it was very prestigious and considered the gold standard of preppy with an illustrious history,” Fox recalled.

He joined the training program, became an assistant buyer, then a buyer of tailored clothing in 1964. “That’s when men bought three-piece suits, vests, button-down shirts and ‘repp’ ties. It was the days of two or three martinis at lunch. All the merchants drank. But I was a kid. I drank tomato juice and iced tea.”

Fox kept getting promoted, eventually to executive vice president assisting the chief merchant. “That’s when I learned the numbers side of the business.”

He wasn’t seeking a career change when he got a call from a headhunter representing Stanley Marcus, who wanted to interview Fox for a job at Neiman’s. “I couldn’t conceive of anyone from Brooks Brothers being right for Neiman Marcus. Brooks Brothers was a bastion of conservatism and Neiman’s was a fashion store,” Fox said.

He met Marcus at the Pierre Hotel. They hit it off, and Fox joined Neiman’s in 1966 as vice president overseeing men’s and intimate apparel. In 1972, he became senior vice president and general merchandise manager of fine apparel, cosmetics, men’s, luggage, and gift galleries, accounting for over 70 percent of total volume.  

“When I joined Neiman’s, Stanley sat me down and said, ‘I’m sending you all over the world. I want you to bring back the best product.’ It had nothing to do with brands. It was all about the best shirt, the best tie, the best piece of leather. The stuff we bought was all private label. You know, Stanley wrote a book called ‘The Quest for the Best,’ and basically, that’s what it was all about.”

Fox had never gone to Europe before, but within a month of joining Neiman’s he was overseas on a six-week excursion. “Stanley said to me, ‘I want you to go to museums in Paris, Rome, Florence, Milan, Frankfurt, Madrid and Barcelona.’ He wanted me to understand the culture of the countries and better understand the mentality of the Neiman’s customer and get exposed to what they were exposed to, and then shop the markets of the world. I learned so much from him and maintained a relationship with him after I left Neiman’s.”

As the Neiman’s men’s buyer, he gave Ralph Lauren his first major order. They knew each other from Brooks Brothers, when Lauren worked at the store. So when he worked for a company in the Empire State Building called Beau Brummel, he called Fox to check out his tie designs. At the time, narrow ties were all the trend, but Fox saw three corrugated boxes filled with wide ties.

“It was interesting fashion. They were priced $15 and the highest price we had at Neiman’s was $12.50. I told Ralph these ties look great and to come to Dallas. He said he’d never flown before.” He walked Lauren through Neiman’s Dallas store and gave him an order for 100 dozen ties. “Ralph was very intense and very committed.” That was the beginning of a long business and personal relationship. In fact, Fox’s 95th birthday party was held at Lauren’s Polo Bar restaurant off Fifth Avenue, which Lauren, and Sam and Libby Edelman, John Demsey, Sonja Caproni and Paul Sinclaire, among others, attended.

Like in any enduring career, there were many successes and a few setbacks for Fox. Hawley, the chief executive officer of the former Carter Hawley Hale retail conglomerate which owned Neiman’s at the time, enrolled Fox in an advanced management program at Harvard in 1975, when Fox was offered the presidency of Brooks Brothers. He was ready to go but Hawley and Marcus countered by elevating Fox to executive vice president of merchandising and marketing at Bergdorf Goodman, then part of CHH, to work with Ira Neimark, Bergdorf’s CEO.

“We were fine with each other. I visited Ira at his home and he wanted me to finish the Harvard program.” However, while in school, Neimark altered Fox’s responsibilities, triggering Fox’s abrupt departure from Bergdorf’s. He bounced back, becoming senior vice president and general merchandise manager of I. Magnin.

In 1984, Fox led an investor group purchasing the Raleigh’s specialty chain and later the Washington, D.C.-based Garfinckel’s department store, only to eventually sell off Raleigh’s to Hartmarx and see Garfinckel’s go bankrupt under the weight of debt.

But Fox bounced back again in 1989, becoming president and CEO of Sulka, the luxury menswear brand, where he stayed for 10 years, elevating Sulka from a key item haberdashery to an international brand wardrobing men head-to-toe.

In 2010, Fox became CEO and an owner of Mark Cross, America’s first luxury leather goods brand. In seven years he revived the storied brand, building a distribution to 75 retailers worldwide with a design vernacular based on its archives, yet with a distinctly modern viewpoint. He sold Mark Cross to private equity in 2016 and continued as CEO until 2019.

“I got lucky because Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga bought the bags. I mean, I never gave one bag away. I couldn’t believe the impact they had. Taylor Swift’s was a classic, flat bag with a single handle. Lady Gaga had a hard-sided box bag, like a trunk. We called it the Grace, because we designed it as an adaptation of the bag Grace Kelly carried in the movie ‘Rear Window.’ Remember the scene with Jimmy Stewart when she opens the bag and displays her lingerie because she’s staying over that night?” Fox sold Marc Cross to private equity, which he suggested became a shell of what it once was.

Fox sees the role of the retail buyer dramatically changed from when he was one, and not entirely for the better. He believes buyers now are too risk averse, having an over-reliance on results from the year before, to set buys for the season ahead. They have less buying power with the rise of planners, travel much less, and when they do, it’s typically at the behest of brands, Fox said.

“I don’t think buyers are trained so much on product,” said Fox. “They’re risk averse in the sense that they want to put the onus on the supplier,” with return opportunities and chargebacks. “A couple of retired store principals said they hated their jobs towards the end of their careers because they felt more like real estate developers or landlords instead of merchants,” through the proliferation of in-store leased, concession shops.

“At Bergdorf’s, we had a great opportunity to do something no other store could do, because there was basically one store. The buyer could also be the department manager, spending time on the floor learning what customers wanted, and simultaneously buying product. That’s originally how the retail business was established, but as retailers added doors, it became impossible for buyers to spend time on the selling floor. However, I think the buyer is much more technically skilled now than years ago. They have significant computer skills. If you’re a Bottega [Veneta] buyer, you know Hermès, Celine and Balenciaga. They know the prices of specific bags. There’s this global awareness. They’re well versed and educated on the market as a whole. Before the age of computers and the internet, a buyer could have great taste and nothing else, and was backed up by clericals.”