Store gallery: John Lewis opens Leeds flagship at Victoria Gate

John Lewis stores aren’t quite like buses, inasmuch as you wait for ages and then two, rather than three, come along at once.

Within the space of a month the department store that everybody looks to for the temperature of the retailing water has opened stores in Chelmsford and Leeds.

“Shoppers heading to the store will pass the likes of Cos, & Other Stories and Aspinal of London”

Chelmsford is small by John Lewis standards, following the blueprint first seen at its 90,000 sq ft Exeter store back in 2012. This means it is one of the stores designed to fill the gaps in the retailer’s national coverage.

Leeds is different. Like Birmingham (which opened a little over a year ago and perhaps proves they are a bit like buses after all), it is big.

At 170,000 sq ft, Leeds is almost double the size of Chelmsford, as you might expect from a store in a major metropolis.

It is also the anchor for the brand new Victoria Gate shopping centre, which is a modern, arcade-style development.

Within Victoria Gate, John Lewis lies at the far end and shoppers heading to the store will pass the likes of Cos, & Other Stories and Aspinal of London while admiring the latticework that forms the ceiling and allows in plenty of light.

The latticework also means that when you are in John Lewis there are views out on to the arcade through triangular windows on each of the five floors.

Menswear takes centre stage

The ground floor goes against the grain in terms of department store design and gives mens fashion a prominent location alongside beauty, instead of menswear being hidden away in a secondary space or even a different floor, on the basis that it is a ‘destination’.

Both the menswear and stationery departments are of particular note for the use of 3D graphics as wayfinding aids and to raise a smile from shoppers.

In menswear there is a heavy reliance on the game of pool as a theme, lending a masculine ambience to the space.

Mannequins lounge against walls with pool cues in hand, while a floor-to-ceiling grey wall is embedded with pool balls.

It’s an indicator of intent for those viewing the department from a distance.

This kind of wayfinding is even more obvious in the stationery department, where giant pencil shavings have been attached to the ceiling.

Shoppers are far more likely to pay attention to them than a dangling text sign.

“In this store we have tried to make the visual merchandising more ambitious so that it can have a bit more longevity”

Kim Morris

Kim Morris, head of store design, says: “[In this store] we have tried to make the visual merchandising more ambitious so that it can have a bit more longevity.

“We wanted to bring moments that will make people want to spend a little more time in an area.”

To this end, the ‘Jean Lewis’ mannequin – aka ‘the flying lady’ – is suspended above part of the beauty department. It is hard not to smile at what has been done.

Morris and her team have worked hard to create an environment that will offer a conducive home to incoming beauty brands, but that will still remain firmly under the retailer’s control.

This has been achieved through a suspended metal ribbon within which every brand has to work.

“It is hard not to smile at what has been done”

The rest of this large store is about playing with standard, commodity-based displays and making them interesting.

Morris says that she is proud of the fact that John Lewis has remained true to its core ethos of making a bed department a bed department, rather than ‘lifestyling’ everything.

But novel visual merchandising has turned this approach into something interesting while still ensuring that it is easy to navigate.

Letting the space tell stories

Morris says that far from department stores being under threat from online operators, she frequently tells her team: “We are in a golden age. We’ve got the space to tell stories, to do demonstrations – all the things that you can’t do online.”

At John Lewis Leeds, visual merchandising features on each floor.

A circular mural, composed of hundreds of wooden artist’s mannequins, signals the Loved & Found area in women’s fashions on the first floor.

Suspended wooden rolling pins and chopping boards signpost the kitchenware department on the second floor.

This store takes its shoppers on a gentle voyage of discovery where they happen upon departments rather than being marshalled towards them.

For those of a more linear mindset, however, there are of course the usual store directories at the foot of each escalator, and the central atrium has a chest-high balustrade that allows shoppers to peer over and make sense of the interior.

When its size and relative importance are taken into consideration, Leeds is really a latecomer to the John Lewis party.

But then, so was Birmingham, and it is hard to understand why Exeter and Peterborough were in the queue ahead of them. 

Leeds has once more proved itself a contender for the ‘capital of the North’ title, with a good store that will ensure the instant success of the Victoria Gate development.