With the UK retail market battling a number of headwinds in recent years, it’s been the fashion sector in particular that has found itself facing a perfect storm. From lockdowns to supply chain issues, fashion retailers have had a whole host of challenges to contend with.
However, with London Fashion Week in full swing, it’s clear to see that the market has turned a corner and last year’s new opening figures in the capital are testament to that.
2022 saw 21 international fashion and footwear brands open their first ever store in London. While this is marginally down on the peak of 2019 (where we saw 27 new entrants), it’s ahead of the five-year pre-Covid-19 annual average, and significantly ahead of the eight new openings we saw in both 2020 and 2021.
What’s interesting is that all 21 of the new entrants are tracking towards the higher end of the market. Last year there were nine luxury new entrants, ahead of the six we saw in 2019, with the remainder of last year’s total made up of aspirational midmarket and premium brands such as Han Kjøbenhavn, Bobbies Shoes and 66◦North.
The most active in terms of origin were premium fashion brands from the US, with seven opening their first UK store in 2022, including Marc Jacobs, which made its return by opening a standalone store on Regent Street, as well as other key names including Rails, Alice & Oliva and Veronica Beard.
This uplift in premium brands is reflected in the location of the new store openings with Bond Street and the surrounding Mayfair area unsurprisingly proving popular, alongside Soho which saw openings from the likes of Aime Leon Dore and Stine Goya. London’s affluent villages, such as the King’s Road in Chelsea, Marylebone and Westbourne also featured highly for new entrants in 2022 and we expect this will continue to be the case this year, with Brazilian brand Farm Rio expected to open its first standalone London store on the King’s Road.
So what has triggered this influx of new international entrants? Firstly, sentiment amongst premium and luxury brands continues to remain robust. Many of these brands traded very well during and post the pandemic and there’s an expectation that luxury spend will remain relatively resilient in the face of the forecasted short and shallow recession. This, alongside the realisation that now may be the opportune time to secure prime retail space on more attractive terms than what would have been the case pre-Covid-19, is all helping to bolster activity in London.
What’s perhaps an even bigger boost to confidence in the capital is that many of the new entrants seen since 2019 are actively expanding their store footprints. It’s not just a case of having one store, but capitalising on current market conditions to secure a second, third or even fourth. Reformation, which opened its first permanent store on Westbourne Grove in late 2019, now has four London stores, likewise Ganni, which debuted in Soho the same year, now has three, with the most recent opening on the Kings Road.
After a turbulent few years it’s reassuring to see the fashion market getting back on track and further new openings in the pipeline for this year certainly point towards a prosperous 2023.
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