London is always a good idea by Iulia Pop

Audrey Hepburn said: “Paris is always a good idea”. Yes, it is indeed! But London for me is better. This city has so much to offer. You think you know it all… you might be wrong! The dynamic of this city is incredible and in my opinion fashion plays an important role in this continuous change.

We have a look today at some distinctive shopping area of London. To begin with, Mayfair is one of the premium shopping area of London. It is the place where customers demand quality and they are not afraid to spend a fortune in an hour.

An area crowded with art galleries, premium hotels and restaurant; it is place were luxury is at home. The architecture is empowering, going really well with the mood of the zone.

When it comes to the actual stores the windows reflect what the brands stand for. Visual merchandising is what is really impressive in this particular corner of London. You can observe the fact that high end brands pay more attention to detail.  Their concepts behind their window displays are better taught and their budgets are more extensive.

Louis Vuitton, part of LVMH group, comes with a futuristic and colourful approach for their enormous window displays. The product is placed in the core of the entire concept. The sender of this message delivers what the customer coming to Mayfair will notice for sure. The message is powerful and it is definitely break in through all the noise created by the rest of retailers.

Carnaby Street is it the opposite of Mayfair when it comes to their target consumer and also the atmosphere of the place. If in Mayfair the visual merchandising was colourful, here everything is full of colour and life. It is the place where young people shop but a distinctive part of the younger consumer.

You will find here a good selection of sportswear retailers like American Apparel, Puma, Dr. Martens and more others. Carnaby street is also the place where you can find good quality denim at places like Levi’s or Diesel. But my favourite store here are for sure Monki, Irregular Choices and Fornarina.

 Monki is a two floor store based is the heart of Carnaby Street. What makes this store so amazing is definitely the store experience. They made their store having in mind a true image of their target customer.

In order to illustrate the image of the Carnaby street consumer I choose to put some street style shots from my previous trip to London. You can immediately observe that my previous statement is correct, is definitely the younger generation that these retailers are up to. Retailers choosing this location are having a distinctive picture of their customer. It is a person with a more casual look, maybe interested in sportswear or good quality denim pieces.

In the middle of this to areas from a retail perspective point of view sits Oxford Street.

Oxford Street is one of the most popular shopping area in London. In my opinion the popularity comes from the fact that you can find something for almost any one. It is so versatile, so dynamic and always full of people.

The first thing that shocked me when I first went to Oxford Street is the amount of floor space.  Everything is push to the extreme when it comes to the amount of products. But sometimes retailers bet too much on the amount of traffic in this area. A good example is the effort they put in their visual display. Topshop choose to invest more in key periods of the year like the Christmas time and for the rest of the year they bet on the loyal base customer, the name of the brand and also the good location of their store.

You cannot point a particular type of consumer that shops in Oxford Street. On this street, mostly because of the high level of popularity, a lot of tourists come here to shop.

London, from a fashion retail point of view, offers a diversity that you do not find in any capital of Europe. From interviewing consumer in these three areas I found out the fact that they believe London’s fashion environment is unique, braver but with a strong respect for history and heritage. Maybe some people think that London lost its popularity among the other fashion capitals but from my perspective their still something about this city that intrigues you and make you curious.