River Island to launch 40+ fashion.

[SheWoreRedVelvet]

Anyone else seen this in the media today? Can't do links but the few pieces I saw looked really good.

The Facebook page is dire. Full of crappy caring is sharing drivel and multiple hash tags. I may ask them why they chose the name.

Yeah go for it👍🏻😂.

Ask them why the stuff is so hideous too!

I've sent a message.

To be honest I’ve not even looked at the clothes as I already know it’s not going to be for me.

Oh FFS. What a load of crap

I wouldn't be seen dead in any of it

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I’m not sure what they’re thinking with the designs. Some of it looks really dated (2000s/early 2010s) to me - see pics!

The shirts at the end of the photos look as though they've been designed with a specific brief -

'Our customer is late 40s and just got divorced. She needs something to wear with leather trousers for her celebratory night at the 80s themed nightclub she's going to go to with her other divorced mates after she's had the highlights and 'I want to speak to the manager' haircut.'

especially the godawful flouncy red one.

I reckon they'd have been better to just get in some older models to model some of their regular clothes (and maybe produce a few nicer things/better fabrics) and just stick that in among the younger models then promote it as wanting to appeal to a broader range of ages. Agree calling it Harpenne is beyond ridiculous. All comes across quite ageist actually.

Harpenne sounds like a contraceptive pill

Wow, is it April 1st?

It looks horrible - cheap and nasty, in horrible fabrics.

Frankly, I'd rather shop at M&S.

There's a couple of OK pieces - they would be the white shirt and long-line puffa for me (which I already know would make me look like an overfed leech but if it's freezing, I don't care!). Much of the rest is the garish print/"quirky" cut look that clogs every sale rail in the land.

Yuk

Anyone remember Mandolin? Launched in the early noughties for 40+ women - if I recall correctly George Davies might have been involved. It bombed.
Mary Portas didn’t fare much better, and if anyone knew that market, you’d have thought she would have done.
I think Jane Shepherdson kind of pulled it off during her time at Whistles but she was more subtle about it. I remember her talking about Sofia Coppola - who will have been early 40s at the time - as being a kind of muse. Clare Hornby at Me and Em does a similar thing - she talks about ‘grown up’ women without specifying age. I think that’s a cleverer way to do it.

The Mary P stuff was horrible. Nasty colours and fabrics and somehow both huge and clingy at the same time.

Brands often say they're being targeted at an age range lower than it actually is - as relative youth is apparently always aspirational. So if you say 40+, it's really aimed at 60s. Which is maybe why they've slipped up with the baby boomer comment.

True.

Forever forty as mary p said

Yes it was grim. Mandolin was no better - lots of shrugs as I remember.
No-one gets the fabrics right but fabrics are probably the only thing we’d all agree on.

Soz cross post that was to Remus.

And if they think 60 year olds will be any more taken with it I suspect they’re sorely mistaken.

Oh no lol. Can’t be doing with frills and asymmetric this and that, note they use 20 something models, this is because anyone over 40 is gunna look like a homeless pottery teacher in that shit

homeless pottery teacher... 😂

Retailers really need to realize that there is a fine line when it comes to these things. No asymmetric hems!

Harpenne? Sounds like it was invented by a misogynistic male fashion designer who just divorced his 40 something wife. He wanted to call the range "Harpie" but wasn't quite brave enough. Sounds like a joke name out of AbFab.

Lol. I'd be tempted by a range called Harpie.