The Limited closed all 250 stores — Sycamore bought the name for $26.8m

The Limited, founded by Les Wexner, was one of the defining mall brands of American womenswear before Wexner sold the business in 2007. Under private equity owner Sun Capital Partners it carried heavy debt while mall traffic fell. The deeper cause had been visible for years: as one expert put it, the seeds of the demise were planted decades earlier, when the retailer took aim at Ann Taylor's market of well-dressed professional women — 'you took that brand and gave it a different target customer… and it's the wrong target customer.'

On January 6, 2017, The Limited announced it would close all 250 of its stores, citing shoppers' move toward online buying and fast fashion. The chain shuttered every store and its website, then filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection that month. The leadership had already emptied out: chief executive Diane Ellis departed after less than two months in the role, and interim chief executive John Buell left in late December 2016 — the company entered bankruptcy without a chief executive at all.

At the February 2017 bankruptcy auction, Sycamore Partners won with a $26.8 million bid for the intellectual property — trademarks, website address, social media accounts and the e-commerce business — beating its own $25.75 million stalking horse offer. Sun Capital made back its original $50 million investment 1.8 times over through prior distributions and wrote the remaining equity down to zero. What survived was a name, a URL and some social accounts. The stores, and everyone who worked in them, did not.