Luciano Manganella’s Final Sale

Let Luciano Manganella tell you something else: New York & Company wanted him out.

What a coincidence that not three weeks before he could cash in the $7 million, he was let go. “You have to really look at the whole picture. Thirty-seven, 38 years [with Jasmine], everything has been fine. All at once the whole world crashes down and nobody sees that there’s a large chunk of money.” When New York & Company called him into headquarters that day in late May to place him on leave, he had no idea, he says, what the meeting would be about. After the execs informed him of their investigation, they told him that until further notice he was not allowed to so much as walk into a Jasmine Sola store—his stores!—or attend any company gatherings. New York & Company wouldn’t say what he was being investigated for, he says, and he was angry and confused. He thought New York & Company felt he was doing a good job. After all, he says, it had rewarded his leadership two months earlier with a six-figure bonus.

Manganella says he didn’t learn exactly what he was being accused of until June 22, one week before New York & Company filed its official complaint against him. Sexual harassment? He would never make anyone uncomfortable; he wanted to welcome people. Giving compliments and being friendly were in his nature. He’s Italian, remember. Besides, commenting on looks is part of the fashion business, especially when you specialize in women’s clothing, especially when you are surrounded by women. Manganella identified with his female employees. “I always was like one of the girls,” he says. “I listened to their boyfriend story, their going-out story, their clothing story.”

Each of the women, he claims, had agendas for making their accusations. “They wanted to preserve their jobs and would stab you in the back to do it,” says Manganella. “If a new boss comes in and says they’ll [raise] your salary if you tell them things about your old boss, where is your loyalty?” In sworn testimony later filed in court, Manganella’s lawyer, Dan Rosenfeld, claimed that around the same time they revealed the allegations against Manganella, the accusers saw their status change at New York & Company. According to Rosenfeld, Maggie Wakeland, the Jasmine Sola buyer, would “tell you that, like Ms. Chichester and Ms. Burgess, since Mr. Manganella was terminated, she had been given some additional job perks. In her case, a new, more prestigious title, a raise and a new...compensations system.” New York & Company, in the same court documents, denies the allegations. None of the women returned calls seeking comment.

Many Jasmine Sola employees say that New York & Company quizzed only select managers, buyers, and merchandisers who had worked with Manganella. Had he ever said anything sexual or in any way inappropriate? Ever? Many of the resulting charges, Manganella says, were comments taken out of context; some didn’t happen at all, he swears. The accusations, he says, are the “most monstrous thing that ever happened to me.” In Sonia Bawa’s case, he says, the Kama Sutra incident came about thanks to a movie he’d watched on television. Some Jasmine employees were discussing films in the basement of the Harvard Square store. Manganella says he told them he had seen a nice movie, a love story. God strike him down, he says, if he ever said anything about Sonia Bawa doing the Kama Sutra with him. The allegations about him slipping his hands down the front of Bawa’s pants he finds outrageous. “I never touched anybody,” he says. “It’s absolutely untrue. I probably made a comment on the pockets, but I know exactly how to deal with a fit model.... I want to tell you something, I never, ever, ever, ever touched anyone.”

Donna Burgess, the HR rep who claimed he forced oral sex on her—her stories were untrue, too, he says. After her duties had been consolidated through the merger, he contends, he stood by her, ensuring that she had a job with New York & Company. But Burgess turned on him, he says, just as she has done with New York & Company, filing a complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination alleging that New York & Company failed to protect her from Manganella.

Liz Chichester? Manganella says he barely knew her. His wanting to take her to the French Riviera—Manganella is Italian. He vacations in southern Italy, Salerno, Positano, the Amalfi Coast. Why would he go to the south of France? He’s never even been there, and he’s not planning on going anytime soon. And Ksieniewic, whose allegations sparked the investigation? If she was so unsettled by his behavior, he wonders, why did she continue to spend time at his home for months after the supposed initial advances? Why would she agree to go to the beach with him? “Most victims of sexual harassment likely wouldn’t spend their time—their free time—with a harasser, on a beach, in bathing suits,” Manganella’s lawyer Dan Rosenfeld argued in a hearing later filed in court.

Looking back, Manganella says, it all fits a pattern. At every turn, New York & Company was trying to undermine him. Though Jasmine Sola launched nine stores in the fiscal year 2006, instead of trusting Manganella to run the business as he had successfully done for 36 years, the new owners put roadblocks in his way, court documents allege, denying him access to company bank accounts and excluding him for important meetings, as well as subjecting him to more-personal affronts like failing to give him the paperwork necessary for him to complete his taxes. New York & Company, the documents claim, also exercised its veto power over several real estate deals he had lined up for new Jasmine Sola stores in competitive malls, because, Manganella theorizes, prospective New York & Company outposts had previously been rejected from the same shopping centers. At the same time, he was pressured to accept new locations endorsed by New York & Company’s CEO, Richard Crystal.

Once, according to court documents, Manganella sat down with Crystal and some of his fellow executives in Crystal’s Manhattan office and told them how the New York & Company brand stores should be run. That’s just his way. He thinks perhaps Crystal considered him a threat and was looking for a way to dispose of him. “If New York & Company had come to me and said, ‘This is a situation we need to correct,’ I would have done whatever I could,” he says.

“Because this is my reputation.”

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