Luciano Manganella’s Final Sale

The drastic change in merchandise also didn’t help. The formula that worked for the cheaper, mass-market New York & Company chain bombed when applied to Jasmine Sola. The new inventory was markedly inferior; under New York & Company’s buyers, the Jasmine label was sewn into scores of second-rate garments from new outside suppliers. Bargain brands more likely to be found at generic department stores poured in. The few big-name pieces left in the store were flanked by knockoffs of the same style, at low prices that were nonetheless not low enough to compete with new European megachains like H & M.

“They’d sell a Juicy Couture jumpsuit, for instance,” says Steve Simon, owner of local chainlet National Jean Company. “Then they’d have the same suit with a Jasmine tag for just 30 percent less. When Zara’s down the street—with hundreds of the same thing but for much lower price points—which are shoppers going to go for?”

But more than anything else, Jasmine Sola couldn’t work without Manganella. “That business wasn’t in [New York & Company’s] DNA,” says equity analyst Samantha Panella of Raymond James, who tracks the apparel industry.

To loyal Jasmine Sola customers, the imminent closing of the Boston institution seems surreal. There are Facebook groups devoted to saving the store. “I have customers coming in asking, ‘Are you closing because of the sex scandal?’” says a current manager at the Newbury Street location. “And I laugh every time and say, ‘Uh, no. We are closing because of New York & Company.’”

Let me tell you again: Luciano Manganella is a broken man.

His hair is grayer, his face more worn than when he last barked at store managers. “The rules have changed,” he says, welling up, as we sit in Abe & Louie’s. “I grew up constantly complimenting. I didn’t know that complimenting was wrong…in a lifetime there are a lot of things that happen.”

If New York & Company follows through on its planned February shuttering, it will bring the final twist of the knife. Closing will mean that whatever Jasmine inventory is left will be liquidated, and all of the clothes that Manganella loved and refused to hand to discounters will find their way to Marshalls and TJ Maxx. “They have destroyed my professional life, my stores.... They crucified me,” he says.

But Manganella is not completely without hope. Late last fall, he made a bid to repurchase Jasmine Sola. It seemed like the perfect solution: New York & Company would recoup some of its losses; he would revive the company that had been his whole life. After that offer was rejected, he tried again and early last month received a more receptive response; the deal, if it goes through, would let him buy back five Jasmine locations and start over. There’s also a countersuit he filed against New York & Company after his firing. Through it, he’s seeking to void a noncompete agreement he’d signed with New York & Company. Because if all else fails, Luciano Manganella has a vision for a new business.

He says he would like to open a lingerie store.