The Martine Rose’s Clark’s Pop-up collection arrived at the Selfridges Corner Shop this week, let’s unpack how exclusive launches are a win-win for retailers and brands.
Martine Rose likes to forge a community, to make people feel like they’re part of something. She has done just that with so many of her fashion shows, creating a market in Florence, a nightclub in Paris, or a community centre in North London.
This week, the British-Jamaican designer took over the Selfridges Corner Shop with her debut collection for Clarks, as the brand’s first-ever guest creative director. It is a four part collection with chunky platform sole shoes, inflated heels and snakeskin prints. There will also be a limited edition T-shirt, shoe care set and posters.
The Selfridges Corner Shop has been transformed into a set of 80s-inspired bedrooms, by set designer Polly Philp and is called “Coming Up Roses.” Following its Selfridges debut, the Clarks installation will travel to Concept in New York; Voo Store in Berlin; Chamber in Singapore, and Tun Razak Exchange in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
The idea is that people can lounge around on the beds after an exhausting day of shopping in the department store. The Corner Shop will be an opportunity for shoppers to “slip on a pair of shoes from the new collection,” says Rose when explaining the set design process in Women’s Wear Daily.
Evoking a sense of nostalgia is a recurring idea that Martine Rose injects in her projects. When designing for the Selfridges pop-up, she sourced inspiration from the people around her and the universal things kept in our bedrooms.
“You have to make people relate to it. That’s certainly how I like to engage with people.” Rose further elaborates in WWD. Curating a world that her audience feels familiar in shows us one way Rose has forged a cult around her namesake label.
For Selfridges, partnering up with Martine Rose draws in a more intimate community of consumers. Collaboration allows both parties to reach new customers with endorsement from a brand that they already potentially know, like and trust. It also opens retailers up to new ideas and processes that can be tested before fully integrating it into their business.
In the face of tough competition from online stores, high costs to gain customers, and challenges with managing inventory and demand, multi-brand retailers like Selfridges need to find innovative ways to attract customers and meet profit goals. The Corner Shop is a strategy that Selfridges has devised to attract new customers.
Selfridges has navigated three other collaborations in the past few months, the last one marking Pharrell Williams debut collection for Louis Vuitton and the other two for Stella McCartney and Versace respectively. All of them curated a selection of products that were then featured in Selfridges’s London store in order to inject it with new brands and styles and draw in a new crowd of boutique loyalists.
The ultimate goal in marketing is to connect with diverse audiences, and that’s exactly what the Corner Shop achieves. Through social media promotion and press recognition for exclusive collections, pop-ups at the Selfridges corner shop not only create excitement for collaborations like Martine Rose for Clarks but also validates its customer, expanding its presence in the market.
Top image “Coming Up Roses” photographed by artist Sharna Osbourne. Available at Selfridges, Martine Rose and globally at Clarks stores from tomorrow.
