What M&S did next: easy-to-wear chic
As it announced the closure of 60 stores, the troubled retailer presented an impressive spring-summer collection. But will it work? Emily Cronin reports
When Marks & Spencer’s fashion designers set about creating their springsummer 2017 collections, they tapped into a new source of inspiration: their shoppers.
The retailer convened focus groups of existing customers and never-stepin-the-doors to weigh in on the design direction for the new season – a shrewd undertaking given our national obsession with the retailer’s every shelf-shift. Three groups of 40 women gathered to tell the designers just what they thought of the current assortment. Their message: give us in-season pieces, natural fibres, refined fits and feminine details, and shoes and bags for every outfit.
“One of the things that came strongly through the groups was that this collection is dropping into stores in February. Having the right layers to take you through the season feeling confident, and a colour palette that is seasonally appropriate, were both important to them,” Jo Jenkins, director of womenswear, lingerie and jewellery, said during a preview for the Telegraph fashion team.
“We’re on a journey. We’ve started it – it’s quite new – but they love it. And they’re vocal.”
Consulting the M&S everywoman was a smart move, especially in light of recent rumblings about the group’s Archive by Alexa Chung collaboration failing to cater to core customers (54 per cent of whom are over 50). And while the store must make inroads to a younger demographic if it is to endure, no matter how many pie-crust-collar blouses or vinyl trenches the young may snap up (about 25,000 of the latter, according to the recent figures), the average M&S shopper is still more likely to have more in common with Chung’s mother than the It Girl herself. She’s certainly more likely to be interested in high-quality staples and dignified, easy dressing than anything short or sheeny-shiny. We don’t envy the design team’s heavy load, or the scrutiny it is under.
But Mrs Core-Customer should find plenty to wear next season. The collection contains a wardrobe’s worth of earth-toned separates, soft denim pieces, breezy dresses and stellar skirts. In place of last summer’s cold shoulders, there’s a statement sleeve for every wearer, with ample tie-cuffs, bell sleeves (look out for the striped poplin designs), ruching and bows.
Skirts are another high point, with one ruffled skirt in black-and-white gingham and an Hermès-orange leather midi (the successor to last season’s tobacco-brown leather culottes) as the standouts. That gingham skirt nodded at the Altuzarra runway; a yellow dress could have passed for Tibi at a fraction of the price, and a floaty pleated dress and plait-fronted saddle-bag might have been next-season Chloé. The design team is borrowing, but they’re borrowing from the right (read: expensive-looking) places.
There’s a buy-now, wear-now moment as well. The Accessory Edit is a collection of shoes (including a pretty flower-embroidered handbag and a Miu Miu-esque ballet flat), handbags and jewellery intended to whet appetites for what will follow next year. It’s no accident that the store chose to focus on a category perfect for gifting. “Accessories definitely resonate at this time of year with our customer,” Jenkins said.
How this will translate to stores is, of course, the key question. There’s a disconnect between the style, value and strong point of view that comes through at press previews, where every mannequin is painstakingly styled and perfectly lit, and the instore environment as experienced by shoppers. The woman who visits M&S seeking smartly priced runway-lite designs may not be inspired by having to dodge sandwich-seekers and men comparing multipacks of boxer shorts.