It has been striking, over the last few weeks, to watch the almost gleeful flow of reports and speculation about the maybe-probably-now-confirmed bankruptcy of Barneys New York, the fabled department store.

Starting in mid-July, when Reuters broke the news that a rent hike at the Madison Avenue store was putting Barneys under untenable pressure, the rumors have come with notably regularity: It could happen as early as this week! O.K., maybe next week! They have hired bankruptcy advisers! Designers won’t send their merch! Bathrooms aren’t being cleaned!

And so on until Monday, when it all proved true.

Barneys is not the first New York store to have problems, nor the first department store. The sector as a whole has been experiencing a major retrenchment in the face of changing consumer shopping habits and the growth of e-tail, which has made going to a store much more about experience than just buying stuff.

[A visual history of how Barneys built a brand of cool.]

As Scott Malkin, the founder of the luxury outlet malls Value Retail, once told The New York Times: “The war is over. Alibaba won.”