How Fiona is helping to relaunch a classic Brit brand
NEW JAEGER MD LEADING TEAM PUTTING LABEL BACK AT HEART OF CLOTHING DESIGN, WITH BACKING OF M&S
THE MD of the relaunched Jaeger British style brand has said she is keen to build on its heritage and expand it into more concessions and more ranges.
Fiona Lambert, who lives in Leicestershire, was brought in to head up the classic label after Marks & Spencer bought Jaeger out of administration at the start of the year.
She and a team of 18 former Jaeger employees and 12 new staff have spent the past months rebuilding the business from offices above M&S’s Marble Arch store.
Ms Lambert says the team of designers, merchandisers, buyers and technologists have built an autumn/winter range of “contemporary, collectable pieces”, with many items, such as coats, dresses and knitwear, taking inspiration from the Jaeger archives which date back some 137 years.
The collection launched on the M&S website yesterday and in 12 stores at the end of the month, including Bluewater, Edinburgh, Grafton Street in Dublin, Harrogate and Marble Arch.
A full “store within a store” in Edinburgh has its own Jaeger entrance, and the plan is for more concessions to follow next March, potentially followed by international outlets.
The range – split pretty much 80/20 female to male – will be added to as it becomes established, followed by a broadened product offer for Spring/ Summer 2022.
Ms Lambert – whose background takes in Next, George at Asda and River Island – said she would like to see it move into kidswear and home furnishings and furniture, dependent on customer feedback. Before that she wants to “reposition and reinvigorate” the brand – putting it back at the heart of great British clothing design.
She told the Mercury: “I think Jaeger has all of the qualities that are perfect right now for retail. “There’s incredible quality, sustainable credentials, it’s a heritage British brand and I think it’s created incredible enduring styles.
“It had an amazing confidence in its heyday, but it’s been through three acquisitions in the last 10 years and I think our job is to return Jaeger to its full confidence and deliver effortless elegance and tomorrow’s vintage.
“I think the alignment between Jaeger and M&S is fantastic.
“They were both formed in the same year of 1884 and I think they are both brands that there’s a real fondness for. “I think it’s perfect backing. We can focus on the design, the quality, the look and feel of the brand, and have the backing and infrastructure of M&S. “The 30-strong team includes a mixture of people who have been in the business a long time, but also some young designers, and we are focusing on digital first so social will be a big part
I think our job is to return Jaeger to its full confidence and deliver effortless elegance
Fiona Lambert
of what we are doing.
“The advantage is we can use the powerhouse of M&S behind it – things like warehousing, logistics, IT, finance. I don’t need to recruit a team for that.
“Because of the way it had been through three administrations there was a focus on sales first rather than customers first. We want to design ranges for customers that want this lifestyle, want effortless elegance, want a purpose behind the brand.
“We’ve gone into the archives and found some fantastic heritage pieces but we’ve updated them and made them modern.
“We’ve also added some witty pieces – we’ve taken some of the graphics from the 1950s and put them on to our cashmere jumpers so they have a personality and a point of difference to them.”
Ms Lambert is an established figure in fashion retail.
She worked alongside George Davies to launch Asda’s George as the first fashion supermarket brand in 1990.
She was then womenswear product director at the Next headquarters, and returned to George in 2007 as brand director, overseeing an operation producing more than 237 million garments for Asda’s 400 stores and for George. com.
After leading the George Home launch, she became product director at Dunelm’s HQ – on the opposite side of Leicester to the Next HQ – before joining River Island as managing director of business development in late 2018.
She said heading up Jaeger was the perfect opportunity at the perfect time.
M&S spent £6 million buying the Jaeger brand and stock after it went under at the start of the year.
Some 63 stores and concessions closed with the loss of more than 200 jobs.
Ms Lambert said: “We brought a small team over and have built up the team since.
“I started at the end of February. It was a great opportunity and a bit of a dream job for me with my background in fashion and fashion history – I’ve got huge respect and love for the Jaeger brand.
“We are still behaving like a start-up – we want that entrepreneurial spirit behind it.
“We’ve obviously got ambitious plans for it. There are lots of opportunities to go into different categories and to go international, so the business and the team here have got really high aspirations for Jaeger.
“I want the [in-store] experience to feel like the Jaeger brand so we have got shops-in-shops.
We’re trying three different formats, including a flagship format.
“We’ve had an amazing response to jobs on LinkedIn and are about to post some more so we are still recruiting.
“We have as blank a sheet of paper as Jaeger has had in its history so it’s an exciting time to join the team.
“We’ve got an office above the M&S Marble Arch store so we’re separate from the team at Paddington – we are an independent brand that has the backing of M&S behind it.”
Products are sourced from overseas as well as a handful of suppliers in Wales, Scotland and England, with some of the fabrics woven in Oldham and Sheffield. There are plans for more UK suppliers to follow.
Ms Lambert said: “It’s been an absolute pleasure to be involved. I studied fashion and I studied fashion history as part of it so I have a real love and respect for heritage brands.
“For me it was important to keep that heritage, but make it modern and contemporary.
“I want it to be ageless and timeless and for these to be things that people are proud to hand down.
“You’ve got to have a strong brand and a strong brand identity and a purpose you can believe in.
“Clearly we are just launching. We all feel really strongly about the range and it’s early days and we’ll see how it goes – but I think it’s a brand in the past that had the strength to go into other categories and I’m 100 per cent confident it will be that again.”
Relaunching Jaeger coincides with a move by M&S to start selling more fashion brands including Joules, Hobbs, Seasalt Cornwall, Sloggi and White Stuff. Richard Price, managing director of M&S Clothing & Home, said it was part of the process of making M&S Clothing “more relevant” for its customers.
In a statement he said: “With Jaeger, we have the opportunity to exclusively offer our 22 million customers a much-loved heritage brand which, under Fiona’s leadership, is supported by our infrastructure but has independent vision and values – making it an important part of the M&S family.”
They were both formed in the same year of 1884 and I think they are both brands that there’s a real fondness for