Store gallery: M&S fashion makeover at Westfield Stratford City

As the prospect of more normal life resumes, including more customers in stores, changes made to M&S’s fashion proposition are evident at the branch.

Fully turning around the fashion division is key to the retailer’s future fortunes and a raft of initiatives is under way at M&S, such as driving online sales through a digital-first stance and by fundamentally enhancing product appeal. 

M&S has broken with tradition by selling, for the first time, third-party brands as well as its own. 

The change, primarily being delivered online, is designed to complement the M&S core offer with an edited assortment of labels that the retailer knows its customers also shop with. Partners so far include Clarks, Seasalt, Hobbs, Fat Face and Phase Eight.

Stratford is the only store at present where M&S is showcasing external brands in this way, including on clothing hangers and prominent in-store graphics as well as dedicated areas. 

The idea is likely to be tested at a few more shops however, where excess space can be devoted to the new names.

M&S clothing and home managing director Richard Price is emphatic that the addition of third-party brands does not mean that M&S is adopting a department store business model.

He says that any external brand must be “additive” to the M&S proposition  - such as Clarks’ kids’ shoes, which match well with schoolwear.

He maintains: “Our primary effort is driving own-brand. What we have that department stores don’t is phenomenal own-brand. 

“We’ve deliberately curated brands that we know the M&S customer shops - we haven’t prayed and sprayed.”

However he does see opportunity to build the portfolio of brand partnerships beyond clothing. “We have a real opportunity in home and we’re looking at similar collaborations,” he says.

Central to driving M&S’s own-label fashion business is womenswear, childrenswear and beauty director Jill Stanton, who points out improvements made to the retailer’s range.

She says that there has been a “casualisation” of the ranges. That reflects trends already under way but accelerated by the Covid pandemic, such as a shift towards less formal clothing as people work from home and the growth of athleisure. 

The retailer has changed the way it displays product in-store, to better show customers ways of putting together outfits that reflect the mix of informal and smart seen in people’s dressing habits now, while M&S’s Goodmove athleisure range is creating additional business rather than taking sales away from other categories.

Changes to M&S’s in-store marketing have also been made at Stratford, to be more inclusive. The retailer’s Nothing Neutral ABout It campaign, spotlighting changes made to the lingerie offer and colours used to describe the product, features prominently in-store.

In the end, says Price, the changes are about making M&S clothing “more desirable” and about “want, not just need”. 

He and Stanton seem confident that M&S is moving decisively in that direction.

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