This new Internet retailer arrives at a time when online fashion retailing, weak in recent months, is showing signs of recovery.

Not coincidentally, perhaps, the collection is about the hottest thing in fashion retailing, especially in those supposed dinosaurs, the department stores.

"This is the heart and soul of fashion retailing," he said.

After all this expansion, fashion retailing seems due for a contraction, and stores have been dropping like flies.

In a tough period for fashion retailing, more than 100 companies, at all levels, havecontributed.

Samples of the Time A sign of the current state of fashion retailing: the rise in sample sales.

Total sales last year were $249 million, and its sales per square foot were $761, at the top of fashion retailing.

They believe that the best merchants win in fashion retailing, and that they are the best merchants, sticking to their last when others strayed.

As a business, fashion retailing is a high-wire world, where the risks are almost always great but so are the rewards for the successful.

That is the challenge of fashion retailing, and it is in this context that Barneys is taking the $100 million gamble.