Owner of Ann Taylor and Lane Bryant Files for Bankruptcy (Published 2020) (2024)

The owner of Ann Taylor and Lane Bryant, which just a few years ago was one of the country’s largest clothing retailers for women and girls, filed for bankruptcy on Thursday, after declining sales and high debt were exacerbated by store closures mandated by coronavirus lockdowns.

The company, Ascena Retail Group, will close 1,600 of its approximately 2,800 stores and hopes to shed $1 billion of its $1.1 billion in debt, the company said in a Chapter 11 filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Eastern District of Virginia. The closings will include “a select number” of Ann Taylor, Lane Bryant, Loft and Lou & Grey stores, as well as all of its Catherines locations. Ascena had 53,000 employees last year, among them 40,000 part-time workers, according to recent government filings.

“The meaningful progress we have made driving sustainable growth, improving our operating margins and strengthening our financial foundation has been severely disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic,” Carrie Teffner, the interim executive chair of Ascena, said in a statement. “As a result, we took a strategic step forward today to protect the future of the business for all of our stakeholders.”

The pandemic has taken a heavy toll on retailers, especially apparel sellers and other mall-based chains that might have otherwise stayed afloat, perhaps even for a short period, without turning to bankruptcy court. Ascena, based in Mahwah, N.J., is at least the ninth prominent retailer to file for bankruptcy since early May, right on the heels of Brooks Brothers and Sur La Table this month, and in the wake of J. Crew, Neiman Marcus Group, J.C. Penney, Lucky Brand, Stage Stores and GNC.

Ascena was known for decades as Dress Barn, the clothing chain founded in 1962 by Roslyn S. Jaffe, who noticed that there were few options for stylish and affordable women’s work attire even as more women were entering the work force. Dress Barn went public in 1983, around the time that the “power suit” came into vogue, exemplifying women’s desire to take on the predominantly male corporate world.

“Women in America were climbing the corporate ladder in traditional businesses for the first time,” said Shawn Grain Carter, a specialist in fashion retail business management at the Fashion Institute of Technology. “Therefore, clothing had to adjust.”