The Mitchell family is now wearing a new hat -- that of a white knight. Late Monday night, the Mitchells, operators of the largest family-owned specialty store in the U.S. with sales of $100 million, inked an 11th-hour deal to acquire the assets of Wilkes Bashford, which simultaneously filed a voluntary Chapter 11 petition. The deal by Ed Mitchell West LLC is for $4.6 million in cash and is subject to higher offers and bankruptcy court approval. A contingency of the sale is that the purchase be completed by Nov. 30 in order to maximize business during the holiday selling period, according to Bob Mitchell, co-president of Mitchells.

The San Francisco-based Wilkes, a men's wear institution that opened its doors in 1966, operates a seven-story flagship on Union Square as well as a store in the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, Calif. At the end of last month, the struggling Wilkes closed its store in Carmel, Calif., and, the month before that, a Mill Valley, Calif., unit also was shuttered.

If its offer is successful, the Mitchell family, which owns Mitchells in Westport, Conn.; Richards in Greenwich, Conn., and Marshs in Huntington, N.Y., would gain a beachhead on the West Coast and immediately make it a formidable force within the luxury men's wear community in San Francisco and the surrounding area.