Barneys Is Getting the Gossip Girl Treatment in Amazon’s Bella From Barneys
By Alexus Mosley
Photo Credit: HBO (Home Box Office).
A personal shopper, a notorious socialite, and a department-store heir. Consider our interest officially purchased.
Amazon has ordered Bella From Barneys, a new series from Gossip Girl producers Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, with Susan Rovner and Rachel Kaplan also executive producing. The show will bring viewers into a fictional revival of the New York department store, where career ambition comes with access to some very well-dressed secrets.
At the center is Bella Baldwin, an outer-borough outsider whose eye for style lands her a stockroom job at Barneys. She soon talks her way into becoming a personal shopper for the store’s most notorious socialite client, a promotion that introduces her to a competitive world of fashion and family intrigue.
It also brings her into the orbit of an heir trying to save the family business. A new job, a demanding client, and a complicated heir? Bella may want to keep her evenings free.
The premise has all the ingredients for a delicious fashion-world drama: an ambitious newcomer, an exclusive institution and people whose personal lives are considerably less polished than their wardrobes. With Schwartz and Savage involved, it’s especially easy to imagine the possibilities for social climbing, sharp dialogue and outfits that warrant a pause button. Of course, Bella From Barneys has its own story to tell. Bella’s position as a personal shopper gives her a particularly intriguing vantage point. She’s being invited into a socialite’s life through the dressing room, where preferences, insecurities, and indiscretions could prove just as revealing as anything said over dinner.
Apparently, the most interesting thing at Barneys won’t be on the sales floor. We’ll be watching for the clothes. And listening very carefully outside the fitting room.