Tamara Cincik

PRET A PORTAS: AN INTERVIEW WITH MARY PORTAS FOR THE OPENING OF HER SHOP AT HOUSE OF FRASER. BY TAMARA CINCIK.

Mary Portas is a brilliantly British phenomenon. She transformed Harvey Nichols into the shop we all wanted to spend in; then she marched onto our TV sets, teaching her retail mantras to failing businesses, the charity market. From OAPs working in charity shops, to overly hair-gelled estate agents, her refreshingly real retail prowess made for gripping viewing, as we saw her map out how they could improve their businesses, we all felt her verve, her potent power at seeing where things could improve and wanted so much for them to listen. 
Now with her store-within-a-store at House of Fraser on Oxford Street, Mary has identified a gap in the mid-market high street here in the UK, the over 40s stylish woman. Cecilia Chancellor is the model: a face at once familiar to anyone who remembers ‘The Face’ or my old boss the talented stylist Anna Cockburn’s 90′s fashion shoots and I think the perfect fit for Mary’s store and its image. En route to a Cornish weekend away she kindly answered a few questions about the store and why someone like me (a new mother with so little time to shop, that service now more important than ever) might like to go there.

1) Mary Portas at House of Fraser is a new collaboration for Mary, in that it brings her manifesto – her Maryness to Oxford Street, to a department store and therefore to a mass market who know and love her from her TV shows. How different do you think this is from what is on offer currently on Oxford’s Street, or indeed ‘the’ high street?

Mary: Because I’ve created a curated space; everything in it has been edited down for grown up women in mind. Where there’s just too much stuff in the shops my space cuts through all of that to exactly what women need and want. Then the design of the shop is hugely important; the space and the staff is all geared towards a great experience. You’ve got to see it and feel it to totally get it. Bring your baby in, the staff will take care of you and him and give you coffee….

2) What I love about Mary is her direct no-nonsense charm: she gets straight to the point and we admire her all the more for it. It became a saying in our house: ‘what would Mary say?’ when we experienced bad service in a shop or restaurant. With online shopping so prevalent now, is service even more important for retail’s survival? Will we pay a little more for a little more?..

Mary: Service is a no brainer. Customers want service that includes knowledge. The staff in the Mary shop had an exam before they were allowed near the shop floor. When they serve you,  they will be able to tell you everything about everything in the shop; right down to how the shoes were made, and the essential oil in my candles and the story behind each one.

3) The over 40′s woman Mary has identified is a largely untapped  resource in fashion, which I agree is more fool the industry, as these  are the women whose kids have grown up, who have worked hard and
have  more money available to shop. What do you feel are the differences in their needs and wants from a shopping experience and how are you satisfy this?

Mary: This is the no bullshit audience. They want quality at a
reasonable prince, they want sexy shoes that won’t kill their feet,
they want modernity and style that reflects where they’ve got to in
their life and their achievements. Its not twee. Its slick and cool.
No-one on the high street is doing this.

4) My mother is an extremely glamorous 60 year old: ex rocker, child of the 60′s; well-versed in the ways of boutique shopping, as she started with Biba and Bus Stop. These babyboomers are the ones with
the cash, more than my generation are in lots of cases AND they are eternally youthful, way more than their war bride parents were. However they don’t like showing their knees and i saw alot of above
the knees looks on your website. Is this something, along with the arm coverage Mary has identified, which you are intending to add into the collections?

Mary: You can’t lump 40 year olds next to sixty year olds. Melanie is 40 next year! I’m sure you are in your mid thirties, you would not want the same things as someone twenty years older than you, it’s about a spectrum. There are a few above the knee dresses because the audience is grown up women; and not everyone wants to cover their knees! There are also below knee dresses; structured high-waisted leggings that are like spanx for your lower half, and pencil skirts that hit below the knee, as well as wide leg trousers. Later in the season, I’m proposing chic tunics to wear with those structured leggings and it is such a good look on a grown up woman. So many people are asking about this; I’m not dressing geriatrics. I want modern women through the door; if you don’t like your knees, that where the super high denier tights I’ve come in. My hosiery collection is designed to go with the dresses; the colours are great.

5) I love the collaborations with British brands, such as Clarks and Biba. What more are in the pipeline?
Terry de Havilland perhaps, Eley Kishimoto? For those of us who like our fashion more edgy than Clarks can offer, but still want it age appropriate and fabulous?

Mary: I haven’t collaborated with Biba; Biba is a sub-brand of House of Fraser’s and nothing to do with me! Working with Clarks has been a phenomenal experience for all of uson both sides, and the whole point is that my shoes look nothing whatsoever like trad Clarks. The Clarks elements incorporated into myshoes is the high quality production values, old-school workmanship,and best of all the inbuilt comfort technology. We’ve developed our own colours, leathers, and lasts.  This is Clarks, but not as you know it.

6) Christian Lacroix once told me that women over 60 tend to stop buying fashion. What can you do to entice them back into your shop?

Mary: Nothing, I’m not trying to entice anybody over 60. I’m trying to entice women with modern minds who don’t go around with a number attached to their sense of who they are.

7) What trends can you see translating from the catwalk into your store, ie appropriate for the market you have identified, in the next season?

Mary: I don’t see this market as a sub-group who are inspired by different trends than the rest of the market. This market is living in the same cultural landscape as everyone else; their needs are just slightly different, their desires are more sophisticated, and they put up with less crap because they can spot it a mile off. These are women, who if they had the budget would be shopping at Prada, Marni, Jil Sander, Donna Karan and DvF. There is nothing out there for them at a mid-to-premium high street level.  My sister is at the top of her profession in the NHS; but she could never stretch her salary to Prada, only on big birthdays. When she came to my shop she was like a kid in a candy store.   We’ve already set down some of our Spring 2012 trends. We’re feeling for sleek 1990’s inspired modern sporty silhouettes; we’ve got some spectacular prints in development with a contemporary artist, and there is a definite 1930s feel of opulence and elegance in the air inspired by the chic of Nancy Cunard and Diana Vreeland.

Do you intend to take this to other stores after London?

Mary: Yes. Manchester is next.

9) How hard is service with a smile?

Mary: I only employ happy people, service with a smile comes
naturally to them.

http://www.houseoffraser.co.uk/Mary+Portas/MaryPortas,default,pg.html

http://dianepernet.typepad.com/diane/2011/08/pret-a-portas-an-interview-with-mary-portas-for-the-opening-of-her-shop-at-house-of-fraser-by-tamara.html

Zoe my God daughter at Vintage at Southbank

Terrace Drinks at Vintage

When Britain really did rule the waves, the high-point of her Britannia arrogance and verve was the 1851 exhibition.  A huge house of glass – a ‘crystal palace’ –  was constructed in Hyde Park.  Queen Victoria, her handsome consort Albert and their 9 children were resplendent in matching costumes: a visual hit of majesterial alchemy.  Exhibits from the Empire wowed crowds who had never left seen Dover’s white cliffs, as well as foreign guests and exhibitors who wanted to display the latest designs, inventions and innovations. 100 years later, to cheer ourselves up after WW2, Britain decided to hold another exhibition based on those same national pride principles, albeit now in a world where not only was the Empire and our certainty shrinking, those participating and attending had survived a war beyond all wars and still six years later wanted some fun and optimism after nearly a decade of post-war rationing.

70s Styling - Vol Au vent anyone?

The 1951 Exhibition saw the building of The Southbank: a concrete modernist Ark of artistic endeavour cutting a sharp swathe across the recently bombed southern side of the Thames: from Royal Festival Hall, to National Theatre, art lived on here in its mid-century absolutism.  The glass house which had encased the original exhibition was bombed and destroyed in its South London suburban location; what people needed was a boost, a sense of hope, yet like all British institutions, one founded upon a memory, an old idea made good, a sense of the past, of continuity into new ideas.

Which leads me to vintage: when I started buying old clothes, they were that, old clothes, secondhand was the name used and they were: 60s cocktail dresses bought from charity shops, deco bags at jumble sales, Victoriana from Portobello, as a teenager my penchant for silk velvet grew unabated as I would forego supper to buy something which I believed enchanted.  I can’t quite remember when secondhand morphed into vintage: perhaps when the prices went up? Perhaps when others en masse showed how they too shared my love affair with the old, with the stories, the craftsmenship and the unique beauty these clothes hold in their seams and darts.

Last Friday, my mother, my god daughter Zoe, my old friend Sukie and my 3 month old baby all went to Vintage at Southbank.  An homage to all things nostalgic curated by the Hemingways of Red or Dead infamy, to celebrate 60 years since the 1951 with a party/shopathon/fete/festival celebration of Twentieth Century modes in music, art, design and fashion.  Transgenerational, we moved from Abigail’s Party installation, to retro Art School printing class.  But it was the shopping, oh my friends the shopping, where my girls of all ages swooped on pieces of beauty, while my baby snoozed on magnificently.  You see he was already wearing the best in vintage: for I had prized onto him that morning a wondrous 1950s playsuit, baby shower gift from the lovely Mica, offset with a red and black check pair of M&S Vans.  I am sure if he could speak he would say ‘Mummy vintage rocks’.  Somehow too vintage has become a noun and for that I applaud last weekend, as a celebration of the best in past memories reshaped into something tantalising and hopeful.

The next day we went to Kew Gardens: both for Jeremy and Dukey their Palm House debuts.  For a still-standing glass palace and a relic of Victorian splendour in a cozy corner of South West London, I can recommend no greater way to spend a sun-kissed day.

Mrs Burstein.

Mrs. Burstein is someone who somehow has always been a part of my life.  She might be the Queen of British fashion: the orb and sceptre bearer for universal good taste; but to me she is also my best friend Jessie’s Grandma and as such someone whom I have known since meeting for a family birthday lunch in Belsize Park many summers ago.

Here she kindly answers some questions I have always wanted to ask her for an article I wrote one handed, when my baby boy was no more than 10 days old.  Hope that you like it!

Interview with Mrs Burstein for Jimon Magazine.

Too Much is Just Enough Ladies!

Sophie striking a pose in the first look from this afternoon’s shoot.

Such a lovely day: great team, Sophie was a total pleasure.

Top: : Beyond Retro

Body: American Apparel

Skirt: House of Holland

Shoes: Bordello

Eye shadow and shoe harmony: the all new matchy-matchy...

Jacket: Mishka Vintage

Blouse: Atelier Mayer

Trousers: Topshop

Shoes: Topshop

Fade to Grey: Sophie Sways and Swirls to Donna Disco in Halson Heritage.

Dress: Halston Heritage

Shoes: Terry de Havilland

Dukey Dreamboat: my gorgeous baby boy on set.

So great to be able to combine the madness of styling with the earthiness of mothering, thanks to everyone for being so open-minded, I love days like these…

Merryn and I at her new store.

Shop Window at 69b.

Merryn Leslie is an old friend of mine: we first met when she was my Fashion Editor point of contact at i-D magazine; swiftly we became close and have been ever since, through the many incarnations of the next decade +: motherhood for her, marriage for me and now poetically we are both expecting baby boys within days of each other next month.  Throughout her latest pregnancy, Merryn has gutted, designed and set up her beautiful new store 69b (http://www.sixtynineb.com/) on Broadway Market in Hackney, filled with a fantastic edit of the best in sustainable fashion.

Having last week, styled a shoot using ethical fashion and finding that a lot of what is on offer is sadly sometimes lacking in the design department, looking at her tightly edited rails of beautiful pieces, I can confirm that Merryn’s skill as a fashion stylist has translated superbly into her new role as sustainable fashion buyer and merchandiser.

All for sale!

Merryn talking me through the collections.

The orange cupboard displays beautiful one-off vintage and modern sourced jewellery.

Jewellery

69b covers two floors: including jeans and changing room downstairs

Merryn and I at 69b.

I feel very proud of Merryn: to create a shop like 69b is fantastically fore-sighted: to do so through the tribulations of pregnancy and motherhood combined, I think is genius.  The collections are comprehensively edited, combined with the odd vintage-luxe find, creating a store which feels light and spacious, yet actually contains a myriad of fashion choices, underlaid with the added bonus of their sustainable credentials: ie perfect for a spot of guilt-free shopping!

While I work out the looks, poses and how to look intriguing, rather than just bulging at the seams, for my soon to be revealed ode to how to looking like the stylist I am while growing week on week, as I am now 5 months pregnant, in the true spirit of diversion, here is a sonnet of love to all those Winter Wonderland inspirations, primarily gleaned from my quintessential top five favourite film list: David Lean’s epic and gloriously beautiful ‘Dr. Zhivago’.

This film has seen me through so many epochs: from childhood Christmas holidays, to litmus tests with boys, to snowed in in New York, through to New Year’s Day two years ago, when I needed some TLC, unaware that life was about to change forever…  I have been building up for another sitting: that’s the glory of the modern age – dvds which you can switch on, off, pause, choose; rather than trying to sit through a film en famille on Boxing Day, when your mother and grandmother would rather discuss whom in the film used to be married to whom and what to do with the garden next Spring…

So here is my litany of timeless Winter inspirations, to show why capes, cossack collars and (fake!) fur trimmed cloaks are year on year a jaw-gasping choice to entertain the glamour of our snow-sieged hearts, eyes and escapist imaginations.  Having just been bought the most delicious vintage red cape (thank you so much my darling Juicy aka Sarah Reygate, for Christmas – perfect for bulge explosion pregnancy stark glamour, mixed with Red Riding Hood playfulness methinks!), from Mary Portas’ beautifully decorated spanking brand new Living and Giving Shop (109 Regent’s Park Road, Primrose Hill, NW1), which was designed by my old friend Kate Monckton (once the best and most helpful pr in London, now a one to watch interior designer: http://www.katemonckton.com/) , it seems fitting to hark back to true style and show a gallery of glamspirations, perfectly (like red capes) suited to bright white snowy days and misty, dark nights.

Geraldine Chaplin arrives back from Paris to Moscow; at the train station in all her glorious Parisienne couture.

This utterly gorgeous colour combination of pale pink with soft grey, marking her time spent learning the art of glamour in Paris – perfection.

Too much is just enough.

The scenes with Lara (Julie Christie), when Yuri (Omar Sharif) falls in love with her, coincide with front-line on the Eastern Front during WW1, then the revolution and thus the colour palette shifts to utilitarian taupes, khaki and earthy tones.  Echoing images from Soviet stark propaganda, these are then wholly practical: woollens, tweeds and furs, yet utterly romantic.

Julie Christie showing how blonde on blonde is always beauty.

Lara an Yuri arriving at the Summer House.

Genius art direction, or how to make sunny Spain and wax look like freezing Russia on ice.

Elizabeth Taylor showing how to rock a mono cape and hat look at Heathrow Airport in The VIPs

The VIPs, directed by another great of British cinema, Antony Asquith and based loosely on the true story of Vivien Leigh’s attempt to leave Laurence Olivier, is another film where each outfit is jawdropping in its chicly cut simplicity: stuck at an airport as fog stops all flights, somehow fabulosity never leaves the room, while scene on scene Elizabeth Taylor shows the value of cut and shape, aligned with perfect taste.

Hooded perfection in The VIPs.

Charlotte Church has been my client since working on her new album artwork over some rainy days on the Welsh coastline and some sunny days in a West London studio.
Truly one of the most sweet, genuine and down-to-earth people you are going to meet, quickly her huge smile and gorgeous green eyes envelop you into a cosy intimacy that she is, really is, one of the girls…
Last night I was laughing with the rest of ‘Team Church’ in the green room, backstage while she filmed and ran circles with her ready wit, around Chris and his guests on The Chris Moyles Quiz Night Show for Channel 4. We’ve been in retro 70′s Streatham houses, tastefully antiquated Stamford Hill terraces, the wilds of Wales, West End mansions (where noone wanted to know what they were filming in the basement!), plus many more… Each time, I look forward to spending time with Charlotte, for her friendliness, sense of fun and honest intelligence. But when I heard her sing last month at a secret gig in Balham, then at The Pigalle, then I was blown away, the voice is a gift from God and for once in my life it left me speechless!.. I feel proud to be working with someone who is the real deal. Charlotte is so much more than a pretty face (which she has of course!); and while we love the dress up part of our work together and I love styling Charlotte and seeing her rock a new look: which we’re calling ‘Celtic Grunge’ (a style where she looks 24 and which we feel suits both the tone of her album and her); it’s that precious voice which underpins all this.
Here are some of her recent looks for different events and artwork.
About the M4, Dave, Charlotte’s sweet as they come driver, reckons he can get to London from Cardiff during rush hour in 3 hours max. Given it took me over 4 when starting out at midnight, you know you’re on the right team!!!

The Cover and yes it was raining!

SInging At The Pigalle - rocking Charlotte's 'Celtic Grunge' aesthetic.

With the band.

Charlotte likes to sing barefoot.

Lacy in Balham.

It's performing which Charlotte holds most dear.

Dolly daydream for Heat!

With the fabulously funny Graham Norton

Loved this Nanette Lepore dress

I do love a ruffle!

Still from the video shoot for 'Back To Scratch': so many Charlottes!

The new album is due out very soon. For more info, go to www.charlottechurch.com
You can also see the video we worked on for Back To Scratch (directed by the legend that is Kevin Godley) here on my website.
Whoever wrote this, clearly deserves an accolade;- http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/music/features/Look+Its+Charlotte+Churchs+New+Album-13204.html