Ascena – the parent company of Lane Bryant, Catherines and Ann Taylor – is reportedly filing for bankruptcy. They’re also planning on closing ~1,200 stores which is more than a third of their ~3,000 stores nationwide.
Lane Bryant and Catherines gift cards have gone on sale a few times over the last couple of years, often when Amazon goes through its phases of including gift cards in its Gold Box Deals. While a bankruptcy filing certainly doesn’t render the gift cards useless, the business is clearly struggling and the closure of more than a third of their stores will make it harder for them to be redeemed and therefore demand will likely be lower in the future.
If you’re still holding any of their cards from past deals (or as gifts for personal use), it might be best to sell/redeem them sooner rather than later in case their business goes south even faster than expected.