Loehmann's

Get your wallets ready.

Could this be the end?

Loehmann's, the upscale discount retailer owned by the investment firm leg of Dubai's Istithmar World, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday. Istithmar, which also owns Barneys, bought Loehmann's for $300 million in 2006. To be clear, this doesn't mean Loehmann's is going out of business. But Istithmar has had major troubles making money off of the retailer, which mostly sells remnants of Barneys' warehouse sales. (I got my first designer bag--a cream Marc by Marc Jacobs hobo--there in 2006, actually.) Filing for Chapter 11 allows Istithmar to spend significantly less cash restructuring the company. Now here's the real question: Is Barneys next?

There's a particularly fun fact buried in a lengthy article on bargain shopping in the Wall Street Journal today. In explaining the sudden surge in hi