The story goes like this: The beauty brand, which is a favorite with beauty editors but is a little bit of a harder sell with girls that like bright colors on their faces, was sold by Estee Lauder to Sun Capital Partners in 2006, which means the products are only really available at Ulta and Bloomingdale's besides beauty mecca Sephora.

We hear employees were given little advance notice, and arrived to offices that were shut yesterday morning.

Several attempts to contact Stila via e-mail and phone calls went unanswered.

The privately held retailer aims to open an estimated 80,000-square-foot store at Los Cerritos Center, a Macerich-owned mall near Los Angeles, in late 2009. The space was acquired as a result of the liquidation of Hayward, Calif.-based retailer Mervyns.

The concept will feature a brightly lit floor space with women’s and men’s apparel divided by look — vintage, casual or avant-garde, for example — surrounded by accessory walls along the indoor perimeter.

"It's a way to use our fast-fashion heritage to offer more categories for more customers," said senior vice president Larry Meyer. "We're bringing in larger sizes, a more enhanced shoe collection, lingerie and more categories."

John Morris, the son of the department store chain's founder, Mervin Morris, along with his two brothers Jeff and Jim, agreed to purchase the defunct retailer's moniker and all of its Internet-related intellectual properties, in a sale that closed Tuesday afternoon.

The goal is to put the Mervyn's name back on consumer's radar screens.

"It's great to have it back in our family after 31 years," said Morris, principal of Morris Management, a private equity and real estate investment company. "We strongly believe we have a very strong, loyal base of families in the Western states that would support Mervyn's."

While the Morris family took the moniker and the Internet-related intellectual properties, four other parties secured most of Mervyn's house brand portfolio at a bankruptcy auction, said Gabe Fried, founder of Streambank, a boutique intellectual property consultancy firm retained for the sale.

"We are disappointed with this outcome," said Mervyn's Chief Executive John Goodman. "Although we took a number of steps to improve our financial performance, we were unable to return the company to profitability." Mervyn's joined other retailers such as Linens 'n Things that decided to fold their operations after the financial-sector meltdown squeezed off sources of financing for companies across the board, let alone struggling chains seeking a turnaround, analysts have said. Mervyn's deep discounts during the holidays, the industry's biggest selling period, are also expected to further pressure rival department stores and other retailers that already are headed for their worst holiday season, by some measures, in 17 years.

The economy claimed another large retail victim Tuesday when the $2.5 billion Mervyns filed a voluntary Chapter 11 petition for bankruptcy court protection in Delaware. The filing further dramatizes the treacherous nature of the current retail climate, and its close links to the health of the housing market and the price of gas. The 59-year-old Mervyns was once a star of the booming California market, and for years dominated the retail scene in many of the areas in which it operated. Mervyns currently has 177 stores in seven Southwestern states.

The California-based midtier department store chain said it will reorganize its business and continue to operate as the company moves through the restructuring process. Mervyns follows the likes of Steve & Barry's, Goody's Family Clothing Inc., Fortunoff, Linens-N-Things and Sharper Image into bankruptcy, although many industry executives predict there will be more retailers filing for Chapter 11 in the months ahead unless the economy makes an unexpected turnaround.

The Hayward, Calif.-based Mervyns said it has secured a $465 million debtor-in-possession financing facility from a lender group led by Wachovia Capital Finance Corp. The DIP ensures vendors that ship goods during the post-petition period will get paid. Those with outstanding balances with the retailer will have no such assurances.