As closures require rocked the high street, we look at one brand that has bid to reinvent itself. Has it worked?
Photograph: PR Body Handout
The rebooted Warehouse is coming for autumn. It’s gone the fad, which means out with the work blazers and Friday end of day dresses and in with the prints and tracky pants. Here are five aspects we learned at the preview.
There have been some personnel mutations
Alasdair Willis, who oversees Hunter and is married to Stella McCartney, is label consultant. Emma Cook, who used to show poppy run offs and retro dresses at London fashion week, does the deceitful. An odd couple of quirk and commerce, it shouldn’t work but it does.
It’s now the journeys end on the high street for blouses
There are tons of them, from daisy-printed rhymes to puffed-sleeve and satin-and-tie-dye silk T-shirts. The stand-out is a Hold Up yellow wide-neck blouse with bluejacket’s bib at the back. Subtly referencing the Prada AW16 nautical collection is surely clever.
The prices are pretty good
Most pieces recover consciousness in at less than £250 which, considering we’re getting into four icons at some high street stores, is pretty good. A checked coat is £89, while T-shirts are less than £30. Cook said it was significant to her that you could still “buy something nice even if you on the contrary have £40”. Quite right.
The focus is the U.K.
Cook intended she wanted to bring the “British unselfconsciousness” into the collection, which basically allude ti there are loads of things that shouldn’t go but do, such as clashing impresses on a slip dress or a slightly weird peplum on a blouse.
They’re growing big on the branding.
Anyone used to the justified font that has been vulnerable the door of Warehouses for the past 40 years will be floored. The new logo is quite first generation emoji, with on equal terms brackets and a very grammatically correct full stop. There’s also ‘Go-down merchandise’ printed on ribbons down a pair of skater shorts and on a bag, something that chooses Cook greatly. “I like the cheekiness of it,” she says. “It’s unexpected.” Very recently like the rest of Warehouse for autumn then.
