Green wields knife in cull at Topshop

Tycoon hires new fashion guru to boost sales

RETAIL tycoon Sir Philip Green is masterminding an overhaul of Topshop while he parties on his yacht in the Mediterranean.

Green – spotted spraying champagne around in an exclusive island restaurant earlier this month – has continued a clear-out of big names at the High Street chain in a bid to reverse flagging sales.

Last night it was revealed he had appointed David Hagglund, a former art director at fashion magazine Vogue Paris, as creative director of Topman and Topshop.

Hagglund will replace Topshop’s creative director Kate Phelan, who has worked at the firm since 2011, and Gordon Richardson, who has held the top creative role at Topman for the past 17 years. Green hopes to revamp the ailing brand after profits at parent group Arcadia slipped 16pc to £211m last year.

Industry experts view Hagglund’s appointment as a major step towards revamping the chain’s tired range as it faces losing ground on Britain’s cut-throat High Street.

Independent retail analyst Richard Hyman said the business’s US expansion brought it into contact with an older and less fashion-conscious audience, meaning bosses had taken their eye off the ball.

The chain has ten American stores, as well as concessions in department store Nordstrom.

Hyman said: ‘The American business has encouraged it to dumb down its fashion edge to a degree. Nordstrom stores in particular attract a much more varied, much more diverse, older and less fashionable footfall.

‘It’s hard to be very fashion-focused when you’re also trying to appeal to a wider audience.’

Hagglund is the third new hire in less than a month. He was previously head of his own creative agency in Stockholm, Sweden.

Last month, Apprentice star Karren Brady was named as chairman of Green’s holding company, Taveta Investments, after long-time Green confidant Lord Grabiner said he would stand down. It was announced days later that Burberry’s chief merchandising officer Paul Price would jump ship to be chief executive of Topman and Topshop.

He would take over from Mary Homer, who had worked for Green for 30 years and is quitting to run homewares business The White Company.

It comes as 65-year-old Green faces a battle to restore his own reputation following the collapse of department chain BHS, which failed little more than a year after he sold it to three-times bankrupt Dominic Chappell for £1.

It left 19,000 former workers facing severe pension shortfalls and triggered a public outcry over how Green extracted profits from BHS and then tossed it aside. The billionaire dubbed ‘Sir Shifty’ as MPs called for him to lose his knighthood, agreed to pay £363m into the pension fund and has since avoided the limelight – unlike his 26-year-old daughter Chloe who has dated Jeremy Meeks, a violent US criminal banned from entering Britain.

However, Green resurfaced earlier this week on the Greek island of Mykonos, at Nammos beach bar, which offers £110 bottles of ‘spraying Champagne’.

The tycoon was seen firing fizz around at a party where drenched and scantily clad women danced on tables stacked with empty Veuve Clicquot bottles.