M&S - it's over

[Floisme]

I've been known to defend M&S on here but if this is their attitude they can fuck right off.

www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/05/not-just-for-over-55s-ms-chairman-says-chain-needs-younger-clothing

Because of course the over 55s just loved The Pink Dress. And all that yellow. We can't get enough of it.

No, Mr Norman, you haven't been 'buying too much for the over 55 customer'. What you've been buying, is too much shite.

Um really meant for the older more conservatively dressed women. Backpeddling furiously. Like the Queen sort of.

If they're looking for a business model (although they used to have a perfectly good one of their own once upon a time) I'd be looking to Uniqlo rather than Zara: reasonable quality, reasonably priced basics not particularly exciting but with some collaborations and special ranges to add a bit of edge. Uniqlo don't care how old or how young you are and that, in my view, is why they do well.

I bought Classic for my Mum for her 90 th birthday cruise! Isn’t that it’s demographic?

I do think their padded coats are pretty good and I tend to buy a casual coat from them most years. Dresses end up being too short for me but I quite like their jeans. I have a great red/camel pullover from them too but my great problem is the lack of decent fabrics. Where have the pure wool trousers gone? Autograph was supposed to be better fabrics but they have disappeared.

I have just bought my DD (25) the blue/black sequin skirt that is fantastic value at £49.99. I do quite like their cashmere. JL’s is not better in my view. JL also have the advantage of a range of brands and M and S have not focussed on their in-house brands sufficiently to differentiate between them in terms of quality, price, fashion and cut.

As for price; you cannot have Primark prices unless you are happy with cheap labour in other countries. I am not. Therefore I pay a decent amount.

For those who don’t know, H and M own Cos and Zara own Massimo Dutti. Zara is great, if you can stand the queues to pay, and they replicate catwalk fashion very well. Tweed and pearls are fantastic this year. Both DDs shop here. They are 22 and 25 and very few items in M and S would be bought by my 22 year who is a S or Extra Snall in Zara. Size 6. There isn’t anything that small in there.

For Work my 25 year old does wear m and s white shirts, black tights and pants! M and S are not a complete write off but fashionable they are not. The magazines are full of catwalk trends but they don’t appear at M and S in a wearable form. Either over embellished, cheap fabrics or the wrong length.

EmilyAlice you sound like my mum. She likes to dress well. I think this new CEO has forgotten that today's 60 somethings were teenagers in the 60 s& 70s and do not want to dress like their mothers.
M&S would make a fortune if they made good quality smart workwear.

I think it will be a sad day if M and S sell T shirts at £3.50. Is this really the future of retail?

M and S shops are too big to replicate Uniqulo. How can you fill their huge floor space with basics? You cannot. I think they will get to the stage where it’s use it or lose it. Bye bye a high street institution if we really all want £3.50 T shirts!

Not more cheap crappy disposable fashion - is there not enough of that already?

When I read the French threads on here I think THIS is what M&S could do well. There is clearly a gap in the market.

They need to make it about quality. No plastic bags and shoes. No acrylic posing as cashmere jumpers. A nice neutral palette in natural materials. More like The White Company but reasonably priced.

More like the White Company but reasonably priced

Yes to this, but with some decent coloured stuff too.

I am in the over 55s age range and cannot think of the last time I was in M&S.

I think the issue is that there seems to be a strange view of what over 55s wear.

They could do with a group of women to go around their stores to point out shelves and rails of clothing they should ditch.

There would be very little left but it would be a start

I’ve got 3 pairs of jeans that I like. Nought else though.

I used to like m and s but their clothes just don't fit me anymore.

Their t shirts are way too short, and I am short bodied so they must be like crop tops on taller people.

Also I am a size 8 and they seem to start at a size 12 in most items.

I still buy my bras there because it is the only place I can get non-wired in my size (30 D) although last time I bought one they had changed the labelling to 'my first bra' or some shit, which pissed me off because I am 45

Colours fine.

But please not more garish brights.

I think the issue is that there seems to be a strange view of what over 55s wear.
Yes. Mind you there is on S&B sometimes too

I'm 49 and live next to an M&S food shop which I visit daily.
Simply wouldn't occur to me to shop for clothes at M&S.
Except for leftover bright cashmeres at end of sale, good fun, cheap and only takes 2 min online once a year.

Haven't been in there for years. I'm going to have to look because I haven't got a clue. Last time I did look I couldn't buy a bra. I'm 32D which was fine, but all the straps were too long. They must assume that we are all very tall or else we tuck our boobs into our waistbands. I'm now intrigued though to go and be nosey. It's like being drawn to look at something so macabre, so hideous but you have to look anyway!

The t. Shirts are much too short, I’m not even very tall!

As a 30 year old, who likes and shops in m&s, I thought that the move to incorporate a younger demographic had been happening for a while. Through kitting out instagramers, the £20 skater dresses, and the collaboration with Alexa Chung.

I’ve just had a look at the dresses for autumn winter, they all seem to be designed to either make a woman look like a sofa or a quality street. They are hideous!

A sofa or a Quality Street

They did an archive collection with Alexa Chung. Younger people don’t really think much of her. She’s not real to them and certainly doesn’t represent them. She’s a sort of jumped up skinny clothes horse who gets lots of expensive clothes to wear such as Chanel. Not a M and S bone in her body so her collaboration was a bit of a joke really. Oh, by the way, younger women don’t wear skater dresses! Who does with any fashion sense? Haven’t seen one in a catwalk for ....... well never really. That’s why Zara don’t do them.

Yes. Alexa Chung was probably more appealing to me (in 50s) than young people. In fact, I bought the peacoat (and I like it very, very much).

Skater dresses seemed to be very much a thing with primary school teachers when I was doing my PGCE. I suspect they were the cheap and acceptable face of femininity.

It's interesting to compare M and S's 'capsules' with the H and M 'family'. They have a distinct identity (albeit with some cross-over), reinforced with separate stores, don;t they?

They're missing a trick with their scarf collection. They should look to Hermes for inspiration.

Only thing I did like was Indigo....

I didn't say they were doing it well...

I'm pretty sure the Alexa Chung colab was aimed at under 55's. I own a few bits from it, as do a few of my friends, who are all under 55. I was assuming they were going for 30/40 something yummy mummy s rather than teens and early 20's.

Fashion and style are not an age thing! This bloody age generalisation does my head in and over 50 you do not suddenly need an elastic waist, or artificial fibre, or cheap manufacture or clothes you can only wash once, or in a drab slug colour. What a stylish individual, of any age, wañts is quality design, quality fabric, quality manufacture. A quality jumper can be worn by a 16 year old or a 66 year old, but in their own way and styled to suit them. Shutting stores with current products is daft, changing your offering and then accessing a store's viability makes more sense, unless of course the new CE's bonus is based on the money he brings in from real estate sales! This 55 year old has a beautiful M&S Chanel style suit (made in England) in her wardrobe from the late 1980s, just to remind her how you lost your way and how far your current offering is from your heyday. M&S's chase for the bottom has been the problem.