Barneys Thinks Big : Fashion: Barneys New York is on the move. With one Southern California outlet already opened, the specialty store’s next stop is Beverly Hills.

The store windows show Giorgio Armani suits in a shower of cymbals, headless dummies and asparagus stalks. In the accessories department, expensive jewelry floats in a fish tank or at least it appears to. Fred Pressman, the store president, glides past these surreal sights, wearing his usual uniform: a mismatched suit with brown pinstripe jacket and solid gray pants. This is one of the most famous stores in the world? People who say so warn you not to be fooled by its inconsistencies, starting with the location itself.

Barneys, Seventh Avenue at 17th Street, is a long way from Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, site of Tiffany’s, Bergdorf Goodman and Trump Tower. Nonetheless, that is where it looks to its fiercest competitors.

Known for its humble beginnings--Barney Pressman started it as a men’s discount clothing store in 1923--it is still privately owned by the Pressman family. Three generations have turned it into a specialty store the size of a city block.

At 170,000 square feet, it is bigger than the average store of its type; richer than many, with more than $1 million in retail sales last year, and has earned its share of attention--most recently the 1989 “Store of the Year” award from Money magazine.

And these days it is expanding at a dizzying rate: Six new branches opened in the last year, including a small store in Costa Mesa’s South Coast Plaza. A store almost as large as the flagship is scheduled to open on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills in 1993.

Not surprisingly, the local competition has already checked out the Costa Mesa shop. So far they’re not impressed.

“People walk in and say, ‘This is not Barneys,’ ” says Carolyn Mahboubi who owns the Gianni Versace boutique on Rodeo Drive. For her, the store’s small size and limited selection don’t compare with the original. “It’s my favorite place in New York,” she adds.

“Boutique shoppers won’t like it, it has the scent of a department store,” says Herbert Fink, who owns the Sonia Rykiel, Claude Montana and Theodore boutiques on Rodeo Drive. Seeing the cosmetics counter and jewelry departments up front, just inside the door, are the giveaway, he notes. Fink speculates that he may “not like” the Beverly Hills store when it opens, “but I’ll respect it. Barneys doesn’t play it safe. And they carry every label I do.”

And what does Gene Pressman make of Rodeo Drive with its string of designer boutiques?

“Mausoleums,” he concludes. “Stores that rely on designer names and tourists aren’t in a healthy situation.

“I think Barneys will be atypical of Beverly Hills. A combination of Wilshire stores and Rodeo Drive stores with a bit of Melrose. A little more, not to sound self-serving, hip.”

He’s discovered what people mean when they say Angelenos like color: “In Costa Mesa, they wished our blazers weren’t so dark, they wanted lighter shades.”

And he believes he’s got a fix on the Los Angeles-versus-New York look for women: “Los Angeles is still a little glitzier than New York, but less glitzy than it used to be. Maybe because half of New York has been transplanted to Los Angeles.”

As for the Barneys store in Beverly Hills, to be designed by Peter Marino (who also designed the original), “There’ll be lots of light and air,” Pressman says. “Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills has that, I will give them credit. The rest of the stores on Wilshire are claustrophobic.”

Neiman Marcus vice president John Martens says there is more to opening a Los Angeles branch of an out-of-town store than knowing about sunshine and glitz.

“Los Angeles is a major, forward-minded city. When Neimans first opened, it didn’t realized the customer was quite so advanced.”

To learn the ropes, Pressman says, “I’m thinking of being bi-coastal. It used to be that New York had the best of everything. Now, Los Angeles has at least the best.”

Back in Manhattan, 67-year-old Fred Pressman says, “I never thought about expansion.” Instead, he thought about making Barneys an internationally oriented menswear store with a unique stock.

For years he has traveled to mills in Scotland and England and factories in Italy to have cashmere mufflers, nubby tweed sports jackets and leather goods made exclusively for his store

He talks a lot about taste , and seems to see the Barneys private-label products he developed as a reflection of his and his family’s own exacting standards. There are eight Pressmans in the family business now, including Fred’s wife, Phyllis; his sons Bob and Gene; their wives, Holly and Bonnie, and his daughters Elizabeth and Nancy.

Gene expanded the private-label stock with women’s sportswear under the Barneys New York label, designed by store buyers, made in Italy and only available in the Pressman’s stores. He also founded BASCO, with designer Lance Karesh. A mass-produced line of basic sportswear, it is now wholesaled worldwide with annual sales volume of more than $20 million.

What will Beverly Hills get when the Big Barneys opens there?

A quirky mix of world-class designer labels and virtual unknowns with about 60% of private-label stock. Glaringly absent are the household names of American high fashion--Oscar, Bill and Geoffrey--considered by most to be the “A” list.

“We couldn’t give those clothes away,” states Constance Darrow, who selects the store’s designer-label women’s wear. “They’re the past, not the future.”

And if Gene Pressman, 40, does indeed go bi-coastal, he’ll be something of a fixture in the Beverly Hills store. His staff refers to him as, pause, “unusual.” Indeed, the oldest of Fred Pressman’s sons is not a typical retailer. He lived in Los Angeles during the ‘70s and worked as a “gofer” on Hollywood movies. He’s played in a rock band and, earlier, hated life at Syracuse University (“The snow left salt marks on my bell bottoms”).

“I had illusions of grandeur, Hollywood, rock ‘n’ roll,” he says jokingly. “But I consider what I do now to be similar.” He’s not joking.