By Gary McCartney*


All Saints is a retail environment that could be described as part Dickensian London, part horror movie set.

It is the ultimate execution of an environment created totally and uncompromisingly around the All Saints brand and its merchandise. There is no real boundary where the merchandise stops and the store begins. Its spiritual heart is Spitalfields, London, the very name of which conjures up a certain mental image.

The attention to detail is painstaking.

The store I visited was a recreation of a Victorian style warehouse or mill complete with a collection of vintage sewing machines and a wall of goat’s skulls. Fixtures looked like they had been sourced from disused churches or factories. Brick walls looked ancient, with several layers of paint peeling away.

Floorboards were rough sawn, merchandise hung on chains. An otherwise dim interior was pierced by large barn door type spotlights high in the cavernous ceiling. It was no surprise to go into a dressing room decorated with old public baths style stained white tiles with a meat hook to hang your clothes on.

The whole thing could well have been designed by Baz Luhrmann in collaboration with Jack the Ripper.

The fashion was similarly distressed, faded, and in some cases vaguely sacrilegious. Not as provocative as in some Harajuku boutiques, but not as mainstream as Abercrombie and Fitch.

All Saints is the creation of another world. Totally absorbing, highly engaging, very successful. The environment is the ultimate value-add to the merchandise. The most amazing thing about it is that you walk out not into the smog of Victorian London, but Westfield London. Back to reality - but with your All Saints bag on your arm.

My brand experience was only marred by one thing. Later I saw the same brand on the men’s floor an Oxford Street department store. Its bare bulbs sign and secondhand floor fixtures did not rescue its credibility from its adjacency to the likes of Tommy Hilfinger and a summer promotion of bright polo shirts, or the top-40 based store music. I can see the attraction in the exposure that department store concessions bring- but at what cost to the brand?

 

* Gary McCartney is MD of design company brands in space, (www.brandsinspace.com), and was a participant in this year's tour. He can be contacted on gary.mccartney@brandsinspace.com.au