Walmart closes Midtown fashion office

Walmart CEO Mike Duke has packed up his Big Apple fashion team and is moving them back to Arkansas. (AP)

Walmart is packing up its Big Apple ambitions — when it comes to fashion, at least.

Bruised by a botched multiyear bid to compete with rival Target’s trendier clothing lines — the discount giant is closing a high-rent fashion-design and buying office it opened in Midtown just two years ago.

“We’re getting back to the basics of our business,” Andy Barron, executive vice president of Walmart’s US clothing business, wrote in an internal memo obtained by The Post.

The retail giant has written off a failed bid to penetrate “the center of the fashion industry,” Barron admitted, and lately has returned its focus to basic apparel staples like socks and underwear.

However, “This decision has no bearing on our interest in opening stores in New York City,” a spokesman said yesterday.

The apparel office, located at 1372 Broadway between 38th and 39th streets, housed about 275 employees. While they will be offered jobs at Walmart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., only half are expected to accept them, sources said.

Indeed, senior vice president Lisa Rhodes, who had headed the New York office, will leave in July following a transition period.

“This was a long time coming, and a decision they really seemed to have made last year,” according to one New York apparel exec. “They were pretty much out of the fashion business after Dottie Mattison left.”

Mattison was replaced by Rhodes in July 2010.