Amazon orders Bella from Barneys drama to series

Amazon has ordered Bella from Barneys to series, a drama set inside a newly revived Barneys New York, according to Deadline.

The pickup is straight to series, meaning no pilot is shot first. It shifts the project from development to full production for the streamer.

The series follows Bella Baldwin, an outer-borough outsider who lands a job in the stock room of the store. From there she steps into luxury retail. Barneys New York itself began in 1923 as a high-end department store.

The show comes from Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, founders of Fake Empire. The pair previously guided Gossip Girl, as noted in earlier reporting on their Amazon work. Their Barneys project had already been in development at Amazon.

That development was part of a first-look deal between Amazon MGM Studios and Schwartz and Savage, meaning the studio got the first chance to take up their ideas. An earlier report also listed a Barneys-set drama for Amazon among series in the works produced alongside Ted Gold, showing how long the retail story has been in the pipeline.

Susan Rovner and Rachel Kaplan serve as executive producers on Bella from Barneys. Corey Salter, Colin Smeeton and Matthew Gross are executive producers for Authentic Studios. That company is the production arm of Authentic Brands Group, the owner of Barneys.

For viewers, this means one thing for now. A stock-room job is about to become a front-row seat. The series order decides the next step too: a writers' room and a crew can now take the story through to filming.