The Chain Store Challengegeneration with levels of disposable income sufficiently high to sustain an
unprecedented market for products.
However, it would be misleading to suggest that when I joined Marks &
Spencer, the Design Group was poised to capture the new market. The team
I inherited consisted of around a hundred pattern cutters, machinists and so-
called designers, but the level of creativity and competence was modest. The
practice was to promote machinists to pattern cutters and thence to designers.
My first objective was to reform the department and to raise the level of
design competence. In this, thankfully, I had the support of the board of
directors, which was at the time telling the suppliers to improve their own
design facilities in order to improve their products and meet our quality
standards. The Design Group’s method of working would inevitably have to
change if this was to happen; we became less concerned with designing in
detail on behalf of the suppliers, and more concerned with fashion prediction,
colour and product coordination. The move to a more strategic role for design
meant the building of a more concentrated team of higher calibre designers.
In 1980, a joint ladieswear project heralded our long collaboration with the
Royal College of Art, and we also undertook projects with Kingston and
Brighton Universities and Shenkar College in Israel.
In 1985 Peter Salisbury, later Chief Executive, recommended greater
concentration on research and development, separating pattern technology
from design and moving it to the Technical Executive. In the same year, with
the addition of menswear to my portfolio, I appointed the celebrated designer
Paul Smith as a consultant. By this time, each area of the design department
(Ladieswear, Childrenswear, Menswear and Lingerie) had a small but qualified
team of designers, with a high level of experience in industry and forecasting.
From 1986 a mode of operation was established whereby each area produced
a seasonal design brief, a ‘bible’ to be used by the buying groups to give
direction to the suppliers, covering colour fabric, print, pattern and styling.
The buying groups were concerned with product areas such as ladies’ knitwear
or mens’ trousers, not with ‘lifestyle’ areas such as casualwear, formalwear
and so on. Since a buying group’s annual turnover could be well in excess of
£100m, the coordinating function of the design group was, and is, critical.
Throughout the 1980s and most of the 1990s the success of Marks &
Spencer, and the Design Group seemed unstoppable. We acquired homeware
in 1990, packaging and graphics in 1995, launched the Marks & Spencer
magazine in 1987, were the first chain store to shoot promotional campaigns
using supermodels in 1994; we became accustomed to nominations in the
British Fashion Awards and won the ‘classic’ section twice, in 1994 and 1995.
The dedication of the April 1996 issue of Vogue to high street fashion and
the cover the following month showing our £21 shantung skirt photographed