In fact, Bergdorf’s just started building its first team to “live and breathe” the dot.com, Ms. Penick said, after relying mainly on shared services with the broader Neiman Marcus Group.

Some of those changes may seem elementary, for a retailer in 2019, but Ms. Penick pointed out, diplomatically, the internet isn’t that old compared to Bergdorf’s. “The reality is we have a brand, a store, a history that is 120 years old,” she said. “That is, what, six times how long the online environment has been around? And so it’s still in a nascent form.”

Words like “modernization” and “transformation” can strike fear into the hearts of Bergdorf’s devotees, from consumers to designers to employees, whose loyalty has been cataloged in documentaries like “Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s.” (The title was based on a New Yorker cartoon, but the phrase was supposedly overheard at the store at least once.)

Doormen, gilded revolving doors and chandeliers line the path to Bergdorf’s nine floors — six, if you exclude the ornate BG restaurant on No. 7, the event space on No. 8 and salon on No. 9. Handbags are displayed and often priced like museum pieces, “fur services” remain on offer, and the occasional penguin statue suddenly pops up next an artfully posed mannequin to take some of the stuffing out.

Ron Frasch, chief executive of a namesake consulting firm and a former head of Bergdorf’s, has likened it to “the Willy Wonka of retail.”

It was singular, he said, in that the chief executive could walk around the store daily and talk to its top customers and top sales associates. Clients were catered to in multiple ways: flown to fashion shows in Europe; allowed into the store at night so they didn’t have to be trailed by bodyguards during the day.