Safe Holly vs Cool Sienna: who will lead M&S into battle for the UK’s wardrobes?
One is the wholesome girl next door who has charmed the nation by breezing cheerily through morning TV segments about everything from naughty puppies to Westminster politics. The other is a Hollywood actress and modern style icon we’re more used to seeing working Gucci on the red carpet than extolling the virtues of Percy Pigs. And yet both women, Holly Willoughby and Sienna Miller, have been chosen by M&S as the faces of their womenswear collections.
Willoughby, who is currently battling to retain her throne as queen of daytime TV, has been part of M&S’s marketing campaigns since 2018 when she was hailed as the everywoman celebrity who could help save the department store. Five years on and M&S’s fortunes have indeed transformed – in May, it reported a jump of 11.5 per cent in clothing and home sales and last week triumphantly re-entered the FTSE 100, having fallen out of the index in 2019.
Confidence buoyed, yesterday the store unveiled its new collection and revealed Sienna Miller as its new face, with Willoughby taking a backseat – on Monday the TV presenter had instead quietly posted a picture of herself wearing items from the same autumn/winter range, a leather mini skirt, cream polo knit and tweed blazer on Instagram.
Miller, meanwhile, is dressed to look effortlessly cool in the collection, in designs that are a far cry from the once dowdy stereotype of M&S womenswear. In the store’s baseball cap and boyish tailoring, Miller is the epitome of under-the-radar chic, while a head-to-toe lime green outfit she models is the kind of ensemble made for wearing front row at a fashion show.
“I have obviously grown up in England, and Marks and Spencer is part of the fabric of our country,” Miller tells the Telegraph. “It’s where I bought my first bra, it’s where I get my Percy Pigs.” She’s as impressed as any other Brit who’s been invested in the department store’s sagas by the turnaround in the womenswear, too; “I think that what they’re doing with their fashion has been really extraordinary in the past few years. I love the idea of celebrating a brand that is creating designs at that level, at that price point.”
The way Sienna Miller has been styled in M&S is fashion-forward and modern and plays into the vogue for androgynous tailoring. Meanwhile, there’s Holly Willoughby’s M&S edit, which is a little safer, a little prettier. It’s a comparison that crystallises the delicate journey that M&S is navigating back to success, transforming its reputation, while at the same time not scaring the horses. Can the two co-exist?
Maddy Evans, M&S’s womenswear director, believes that they can. “We want to make sure that we bring all of our current customers on the journey with us and don’t lose any along the way, but equally broaden our range,” she says. “We sit around tables with customers and they will often say to us that they do want to feel more relevant, they do want to feel stylish so it’s about interpreting those trends for her in a way that’s really accessible.”
When Johnnie Boden confessed recently that “I’m a complete nitwit. I effed up,” after sales at his namesake brand plummeted, resulting in an annual pre-tax loss of ￡4.4 million, he was apologising for trying to take the label in a youthful direction and leaving faithful customers behind. But at M&S, a similar approach has already started paying off, perhaps because it has happened steadily over several seasons (“I wouldn’t want to use the word Titanic, but it’s a big battleship,” laughs Evans, who joined in 2019). Take waistcoats, an apparently tricky-to-wear trend, which you might imagine a typical middle-class, middle England M&S customer avoiding (too tailored, too much arm on show). In fact, “We hadn’t anticipated quite the demand that we’ve seen for them,” says Evans. It’s the same with denim midi skirts, the satin slip skirt and baseball caps – all items that have resonated with current shoppers and brought in new ones.
I’m all too aware that the M&S that editors are shown at industry previews is rather different to the M&S that you see as a customer going into stores or clicking online, but I was struck by how on-the-pulse a lot of the collection Miller is promoting looks: wedged boots, which could almost pass for Bottega Veneta’s It design; the casual duffle jacket, which bears a resemblance to a Toteme style, which was a huge hit among influencers earlier this year; 1990s-style ￡49.50 chunky trainers à la Balenciaga and crystal embellished evening bags, which nod to the hit ￡900 creations by Italian label Benedetta Bruzziches. It’s a British take on the kind of high fashion, high-street prices that Zara so cleverly pioneered.
For the more Holly Willoughby-inclined shopper, Evans assures us that there is plenty of choice, from cosy knitwear to smart tweed blazers and the occasional floaty midi dress, although the ubiquitous frocks largely seem to have been usurped by sophisticated separates. Of course, so much of this is about how you style it – the Miller and Willoughby tribes would probably both love the loafers, which are currently M&S’s best-selling shoes, but where Miller wears hers with wide-legged tailored trousers, Willoughby might do a mini skirt. There were heels galore on show at the press showcase – from slouchy boots to chunky heeled courts – but the brand still points out that it’s increased the buy on its ￡35 Chelsea boot by 66 per cent this year to meet demand.
“I am on the lookout for elasticated trousers and really baggy jumpers,” Miller says of the pieces she’s coveting, alluding to her rumoured pregnancy. “I love boots and have been pretty obsessed with the amazing big scarves in the collection, which you can wrap over every outfit.” These must-haves are not really so different to what all of us will crave when cooler temperatures hit, it’s just that Miller has a preternatural way of making them look desirably cool and modern. Equally, in Willoughby’s hands they’d be infused with sunshine jolliness. So if anywhere can be all things to all people – Holly, Sienna and all of us in between – maybe it really is M&S.