Retail concepts

Ebay launches House of Holland online pop-up shop



Last season Topshop took the chance to turn London Fashion Week into a shopping opportunity. This season, Ebay is jumping in with an online pop-up shop to support Henry Holland. As part of the British Fashion Council’s Fashion Forward initiative, Ebay is supporting Mary Katrantzou, Louise Gray and House of Holland with sponsorship, as well as live-streaming their SS13 shows on its Style Collective blog (where – ahem – you can also read some of my fashion musings). As a logical tie-in, it’s also selling an edited selection of House of Holland AW12 on Ebay.co.uk from today until 18th September, with each purchase sent out with a pair of Henry Holland’s phenomenally popular tights.

Gotta say it, this is a great example of 360° thinking; a neat way to bring the buzz of LFW directly to fashion-hungry shoppers while driving sales to Ebay and House of Holland. OK, you can’t buy the SS13 collection straight off the runway (to my knowledge) but maybe we’ll get that by next season.

Will you be buying?



Why has Cocosa opened a physical store?



Flash sale websites are raising their game as competition between them increases. Which is good news for the consumer. Cocosa has already stepped up its offer with a beauty section (which is quite impressive with regular sales from some of my favourite brands including Cowshed, This Works,  and Super by Dr Perricone), and from today opens its first bricks-and-mortar store. The four-day pop-up shop will give customers up to 80% off international menswear and womenswear brands including Halston (above left), Issa (above right) and Missoni.

But why a pop-up and why now? “The pop-up shop experience is designed to raise the awareness of Cocosa to new audiences and enables both new and existing customers to experience Cocosa live, where they can browse and buy incredible designer brands at up to 80% off,” says Cocosa’s Head of Operations, Andrew Miles. And the timing is no coincidence. “The pop-up shop is centred in one of the most fashion forward cities of the world just as fashion weeks across the globe start to kick off,” says Miles. “It’s perfectly positioned to display our ethos to consumers and that’s simply handpicked designer fashion at incredible prices.” For all the hoopla about online shopping, it seems that a physical presence is still a plus when it comes to raising brand visibility.

Cocosa’s pop-up is at The Oui Rooms, 40 Eastecastle Street, W1 from 11-15th September.



Join me at Lacoste for Vogue Fashion’s Night Out… plus my pick of the best of the rest




This year’s Vogue Fashion’s Night Out in London looks set to be the broadest yet, with activity stretching from beyond Bond Street, Regent Street and Oxford Street to Covent Garden and Westfield London. I’m going to try to see as much as I can but I’ll mostly be hosting my own little soiree at the Lacoste store in Regent Street (so you’d better come and say hi or I’ll feel like a right ninny.) (more…)



Introducing: Work Out Life



In the post-Olympics afterglow I’m sure there will be thousands of people catapulted off the sofa into a life-affirming fitness regime. If you’re one of them (I’m not…yet), this might help get the pulses pumping. Newly launched WORKOUTLIFE.com hopes to be a bit of a game changer in the fashion-sportswear space, simply because it doesn’t want to be slotted into one neat box. Founded by Rebecca Quade and with design headed up by Ebru Ercon (formerly of Hussein Chalayan for Puma and Stella McCartney for Adidas), WORK OUT LIFE is all about multi-tasking for the overlapping areas of life, so think working out, workwear and everything else.

With her background in high end sportswear (as well as working on New Power Studio, her own line, and a collab with Asos), Ercon has brought a knowledge of cut and quality tech fabrics together to produce a collection of handsome pieces that tick multiple boxes. My favourite pieces from the website are the tailored ‘Gigabyte’ cropped trousers, the ‘Sidelined’ gathered mesh skirt and ‘Get Sophisticated‘, the poshest cropped sweatshirt you’ll see this side of the catwalk. Quade, a former marketing pro, is keen for the website to be more than just a clothes shop, her vision is for a global portal to promote a healthy body image in the fashion space. For starters then, here’s a video of Bambi Northwood-Blythe looking divine while getting her yogi on…

www.WORKOUTLIFE.com