The £8bn High Noon in the High Street

With £4bn sales, Next has suddenly caught up with its big rival. So get ready for...

DO I welcome the news that Next is about to overtake M&S? Sales at Next grew 7.2 per cent last year, to £4 billion, while it’s predicted that clothing sales at Marks & Spencer will have drooped like so many Per Una gypsy skirts when figures are announced later this week. They will also be about £4billion.

I loved Next, the brainchild of George Davies, when it launched in 1982. It was the first brand to give us affordable luxury, with its very first campaign giving us chunky 100 per cent wool knits, soft chambray, and very British tweed.

It gave us the revolutionary Next Directory in 1988, a classy precursor to online shopping, and of course in 1998 pioneered selling fashion online, becoming the largest ‘etailer’ in Europe.

Now, though, I find its success troubling: it survives and conquers through bargain-basement prices, undercutting Marks by scrimping on quality. A real leather weekend tote in the very first Next Directory cost £99; today a similar version is £72. In 1988 a wool blazer was £60; today a synthetic version is £34.

And it flourishes, of course, by offering young women instant credit: I must point out its interest fees are ferocious – as is its hounding of late payers. To achieve these startling new figures, Next has abandoned what it once did really well – classy tailored minimalism for the office – and now chases catwalk trends. But it has always thought on its flatform-shod feet, while M&S seems to lumber, and is offering quality, yes, but at prices women now habituated to cheap fashion baulk at. (Remember the recent £345 all-wool winter coat?)

After comparing the two giants’ ranges here, I think it’s time Marks’s style director Belinda Earl went five days a week from her current three, don’t you?