Victor J. Barnett (born 1933) is a

British-American British American usually refers to Americans whose ancestral origin originates wholly or partly in the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Cornwall, Orkney, and the Isle of Man). It is primarily a demographic or histor ...

businessman, former executive chairman of

Burberry Burberry is a British luxury fashion house established in 1856 by Thomas Burberry headquartered in London, England. It currently designs and distributes ready to wear, including trench coats (for which it is most famous), leather accessories, ...

, and member of the

Wolfson family The Wolfson family is a British Jewish family known for its business, philanthropic, and political activities. The family owes its initial fame to Sir Isaac Wolfson, who built the Great Universal Stores retail empire and created the Wolfson Found ...

Early life and education

Victor Jules Barnett was born in London, England, in 1933 to Esmond Barnett and Edith Wolfson Barnett. His father died young, leaving Barnett to be raised by his mother and her siblings, among them

Sir Isaac Wolfson Sir Isaac Wolfson, 1st Baronet FRS (; 17 September 1897 – 20 June 1991) was a Scottish businessman and philanthropist. He was managing director of Great Universal Stores (G.U.S. or Gussies) 1932–1947 and chairman 1947–1987. He establishe ...

. Moving to New York City after World War II, Barnett graduated from the

Horace Mann School , motto_translation = Great is the truth and it prevails , address = 231 West 246th Street , city = The Bronx , state = New York , zipcode = 10471 , count ...

and with a bachelor's degree in economics from the

Wharton School of Business The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania ( ; also known as Wharton Business School, the Wharton School, Penn Wharton, and Wharton) is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in ...

at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

Career

Barnett began his career managing what was then the fledgling American operation of

, a subsidiary of his family's retail conglomerate Great Universal Stores (GUS). He joined Revlon, Inc. in 1961, serving as executive vice president under

Charles Revson Charles Haskell Revson (October 11, 1906 – August 24, 1975) was an American businessman and philanthropist. He was best known as a pioneering cosmetics industry executive who created the first pigment-based nail polish and founded and managed R ...

until 1976. Barnett then returned to help manage the family business,

GUS Gus is a masculine name, often a diminutive for Angus, August, Augustine, or Augustus, and other names (e.g. Aengus, Argus, Fergus, Ghassan, Gustav, Gustave, Gustafson, Gustavo, Gussie). It can also be used as the adaptation into English of ...

, joining his cousins

Leonard Leonard or ''Leo'' is a common English language, English masculine given name and a surname. The given name and surname originate from the Old High German ''Leonhard'' containing the prefix ''levon'' ("lion") from the Greek wikiwikiweb:Λέων, � ...

and David Wolfson on the group's board of directors and executive committee. As head of GUS in North America, Barnett led the acquisition and growth of credit agency

Experian Experian is an American–Irish multinational data analytics and consumer credit reporting company. Experian collects and aggregates information on over 1 billion people and businesses including 235 million individual U.S. consumers and more t ...

in 1996. He also became executive chairman of Burberry in 1997. At Burberry, Barnett led a reorganization of the company, hiring

Rose Marie Bravo Rose Marie Bravo (born Rose Marie La Pila January 13, 1951 in the Bronx, New York) is an American businesswoman. During her career, she has occupied leadership positions in several major fashion businesses and is now vice chairman at Burberry, of ...

as chief executive, renegotiating deals with Burberry's Japanese

licensees A licensee can mean the holder of a license or, in U.S. tort law, a licensee is a person who is on the property of another, despite the fact that the property is not open to the general public, because the owner of the property has allowed the li ...

, acquiring their licensee in Spain, and driving major real estate purchases including its flagship stores on

New Bond Street Bond Street in the West End of London links Piccadilly in the south to Oxford Street in the north. Since the 18th century the street has housed many prestigious and upmarket fashion retailers. The southern section is Old Bond Street and the l ...

and

East 57th Street 57th Street is a broad thoroughfare in the New York City borough of Manhattan, one of the major two-way, east-west streets in the borough's grid. As with Manhattan's other "crosstown" streets, it is divided into its east and west sections at ...

. Over Barnett's tenure Burberry's operating profits more than quadrupled and the brand became recognized as a global luxury

fashion house Fashion design is the Art (skill), art of applying design, aesthetics, clothing construction and natural beauty to clothing and its Fashion accessory, accessories. It is influenced by culture and different trends, and has varied over time and plac ...

. The corporate turnaround and brand restoration is still widely studied through a case analysis created by

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...

in 2003. The family took Burberry

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...

in 2002, and demerged GUS into

Home Retail Group Home Retail Group plc was a home and general merchandise retailer based in the United Kingdom. It was the parent company of Argos and Habitat, and once owned the do it yourself chain Homebase before selling it to the Australian retailer Wesfarme ...

and

in 2006. Following his retirement from GUS and Burberry, Barnett bought pharmaceutical company

Shaklee Shaklee Corporation is an American manufacturer and distributor of natural nutrition supplements, beauty products, and household products. The company is based in Pleasanton, California with global operations in Canada, China, Indonesia, Japan, ...

with his younger son Roger and joined the board of

Grey Global Group Grey Group is a global advertising and marketing agency with headquarters in New York City, and 432 offices in 96 countries, operating in 154 cities. It is organized into four geographical units: North America; Europe, Middle East & Africa, Asia ...

Personal life

Barnett is married to

Helaine M. Barnett Helaine M. Barnett is an American legal aid attorney and law professor. She is a former president of the Legal Services Corporation and currently chairs the New York State Permanent Commission on Access to Justice. Early life and education Hel ...

, a prominent legal aid attorney and former president of the

Legal Services Corporation The Legal Services Corporation (LSC) is a publicly funded, 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation established by the United States Congress. It seeks to ensure equal access to justice under the law for all Americans by providing funding for civil legal ...

. They have two sons, Craig Edward and Roger Lawrence. Craig Barnett, an investment banker, was married to Jennifer Peck, a daughter of Barbara and

Stephen M. Peck Stephen M. Peck (February 2, 1935 – March 30, 2004) was an American investor and philanthropist who co-founded the asset management firm Weiss, Peck & Greer. Early life and education Stephen Martin Peck was born to a Jewish family on February ...

. They divorced. Roger Barnett, CEO of

, is married to Sloan Lindemann Barnett, a daughter of Frayda and

George Lindemann George Lyle Lindemann (March 26, 1936 – June 21, 2018) was an American billionaire businessman known for being the chairman and chief executive officer of Southern Union, a fossil fuel infrastructure and pipeline company.Robert Trigaux"F ...

. Barnett is a former president of

Fifth Avenue Synagogue The Fifth Avenue Synagogue (קהלת עטרת צבי, Congregation Ateret Tsvi) is an Orthodox Judaism, Orthodox Jewish synagogue located at 5 62nd Street (Manhattan), East 62nd Street between Fifth Avenue (Manhattan), Fifth and Madison Avenue (M ...

and an emeritus director of the Charles H. Revson Foundation.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Barnett, Victor 1933 births Living people Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania alumni 20th-century American Jews Charles H. Revson Foundation Horace Mann School alumni Burberry people 21st-century American Jews

Early life and education

Career

Personal life

See also

References