Skirt of the season? Pull the other one, M&S
As skirts go, it’s perfectly nice. A chic caramel colour, with a mid-calf A-line cut and top-stitched in cream. Not cheap, mind: £199. then again, it is suede.
But, lovely as it is, can it really be the skirt that will ‘save M&s’, as headlines declared yesterday?
the short answer is no. if anything, it’s the skirt that tells us what’s gone wrong at M&s: they’re too busy chasing fashion rainbows to worry about their actual customers.
the clue is in the breathless marketing. ‘the moment Olivia Palermo stepped out in our Autograph suede skirt, £ 199, at New York Fashion Week,’ gushes the M&s website, ‘ we knew it was going to be one of this season’s most indemand pieces.
‘ When Alexa Chung also wore it a few days later, we knew something really special was about to happen.’
Of course, no mention of the fact that Olivia and Alexa ( pictured right) — super- sl i m models both — must have been wearing f reebie samples, since the skirt doesn’t actually go on sale until April 10.
in any case, i don’t care who’s wearing the damn thing. Question is, will it look any good on me? to which the answer is, almost certainly not.
Nor, i suspect, will it suit many of the women one tends to see browsing the racks of M&s.
Elderly ladies with bored husbands in tow. Mothers with young children, looking for clothes that can be machine-washed and dried in an afternoon.
MiddlE- AgEd women after something cheap and chic for a friend’s 50th. Workers on their lunch break, in for a new bra and an egg-and-cress sandwich.
What use can a £200 suede skirt in a thoroughly impractical shade possibly be to any of these women — even if it is based, as M&s boasts, on a fashionably retro 1970s design?
None. And yet j ust because a couple of Voguettes have given it their stamp of approval, we loyal M&s customers are meant to flock like good little style sheep to get our hands on one, too. Can the manage- ment at M&s not see how patronisi ng this i s? the i dea that Mrs Average, with a family, job and home to run — very probably on a tight budget — is going to be seduced by a high-fashion garment that costs a fortune, won’t last more than a season and really only suits size 6 waifs like Olivia and Alexa, is not only silly, it’s insulting.
We can dress ourselves, thank you very much. And we would like to do so in affordable, wellmade clothes that give a nod — as opposed to a full- on bow and scrape — to fashion.
things like the natty little black four-way stretch jacket with zip pockets i bought at M& s t he other day which cost me all of £39.50 — and which has garnered more compliments t han a l most anything else i own.
Or the tapered trousers with a funky ( but not too f unky) pattern i picked up in the sale; or the dress with the clever ruching that flatters my tummy; or the fabulous pair of high-heeled boots that everyone thinks come from Jimmy Choo but which cost a fraction of the pri c e and are ten t i mes as comfortable.
in other words, practical, affordable, flattering and timeless clothing. All things that M&s does brilliantly — but less and less willingly.
Which brings me back to the skirt. By being obsessed with celebrity and high fashion, the shop is sending out a very clear signal: it’s courting a different kind of customer from the one it already has.
someone thinner, and richer, and altogether more photogenic.
someone who looks effortlessly chic in beige suede; who has the kind of life that won’t mean it immediately gets covered in crayon or dog hairs.
the problem is not t hat its customers don’t love M&s; it’s that M&s doesn’t love its customers. And it shows.
is it any wonder they’ve been taking their business elsewhere?