When Brown Thomas's owner bought Selfridges, he gave his daughter a plum post. It looks as if he had the right idea, writes Deirdre McQuillan
When the Canadian billionaire Galen Weston, who owns Brown Thomas, bought Selfridges & Co, two years ago, he appointed his 32-year-old daughter, Alannah, as the London-based department store's creative director. Having worked with Rose Marie Bravo, the New Yorker who has revitalised Burberry, it was a challenge that Weston couldn't resist. As she commented: "Retail is in my blood. I grew up in stores in Canada and Ireland."
An avid collector of modern art, she had started a gallery on her parents' estate in Florida, using contacts from London's thriving art world. Now she had a chance to make an impression on Selfridges - and since taking up her position she has remodelled 50,000 sq m (540,000 sq ft) of the store, reinvigorated its 29 windows and even introduced a tattoo parlour. Her high-profile Vegas Supernova season and current Wrapped project have brought new life to Selfridges, which is now a hotter fashion destination than Harrods and Liberty and more extensive than Harvey Nichols. She and her team of 30 deliver nine visual schemes a year for Selfridges' four shops, in London, Birmingham and Manchester.
She has just put her stamp on Dublin, too, with the recent opening by Stella McCartney of Brown Thomas's designer rooms.
I first interviewed Weston five years ago, when she handled Burberry's public relations, having acted on her father's advice to get into the fashion business early. Fresh out of Oxford with a degree in English and a developing career as a journalist covering the Cool Britannia arts scene, she had decided to change direction, preferring teamwork to the isolation of writing.
Today she looks less tomboyish and more ladylike than she did then, but she still radiates youthful enthusiasm. "What is interesting about my job is that each of our stores is the best in its class and in its country. Selfridges is retail theatre, and the personal touch has always been part of those stores' DNA."
But big department stores face a challenge, she says. "Today's customers shop globally and on the internet, and they read Style.com. They are not easy to pin down in terms of age, because you have the lady in her 50s who wears Topshop and Chloé, and you have the teenager wearing a Louis Vuitton bag, so you can't categorise them in the old way. That is why the selection is so important. Exclusivity is key, whether that means brand exclusivity or working on a special exclusive product. You have to be specific. We don't have two seasons any more, yet you have to provide continuity, so what is important is getting the balance right. Customers have so much more choice."
Fashion and retailing may be in her blood, but so is an artistic inclination - and drawing artists into the fold of fashion is an innovative way of putting some cultural heart into the business. Selfridges used to sell windows to brands, "and it was a nice little earner", says Weston. "But now the windows have become a real forum and a way of expressing our point of view."
She has persuaded fashion designers to re- create their ateliers, got exciting young artists such as the London-based Venezuelan Jaime Gili, as well as the likes of Jake and Dinos Chapman, to create works for the windows, commissioned special wrapping paper from leading painters and generally created a sense of excitement. "We have to bring surprise and humour. Customers expect to see something unusual - I call it 'edutainment'. It is what fashion really is, in a way. I think you have to keep a light touch, because at the end of the day it is only frocks."
As her father predicted, she learned a lot from Rose Marie Bravo, who ran Saks Inc before taking over at Burberry. "Working for a strong woman in retail was a great inspiration. She was the most wonderful mentor, and that whole experience of transforming a brand was fascinating. She taught me about authenticity - if you focus on that, you can't go far wrong - and she had a tremendous work ethic. If you find the best people and treat them with respect and inspire them, then they can do anything. And she taught me to look at the past as well as the future."
Looking to the successes of the past has taught her much about retailing. She admires Gordon Selfridge for using his store's windows to display the first aircraft to cross the English Channel and for erecting a Henry Moore sculpture on its roof. She admires Brown Thomas for attracting Grace Kelly and Pele, icons of both glamour and sport. Holt Renfrew, an upmarket Canadian fashion retailer that Weston's father also now owns, even had its own dog-sledge team. "I want to bring back that personal touch," she says.
London's annual Frieze Art Fair is another source of inspiration. "Just being there refreshes me and gives a new perspective. I get my ideas from so many places, and the art world is one of them. In art, people are going back to drawing, and the same thing is happening in fashion. Fashion is becoming more about cut and detail: it reflects the zeitgeist, what is happening at the moment." She is currently working on a project with fashion and accessories designers about how a trend in art might appear in fashion.
Brown Thomas also supports young designers, although a common complaint from independent retailers is that, after they have championed a small Irish label, Brown Thomas moves in and demands exclusivity. What does she think? "I would hope that being in BT's, with a global base, would be good for that brand and bring it to a wider audience, and that is what we can offer to young designers. I think we should do more to support young Irish designers. You can't keep designers that are not selling, but we should always look and meet designers and have them on our radar, because there will come a time when it is the right moment."
She cites Edun, Ali Hewson's new ethical clothing range, as "groundbreaking". "For a long time Irish fashion was all about Aran sweaters, and we wanted to bring international fashion to Ireland, to appeal to the international traveller rather than the tourist trade and that hokey thing, but we should be bringing the best from Ireland, too. Paul Costelloe, Louise Kennedy and Lainey Keogh will always be strong for us, but we need to take risks with new names. The BT's team are passionate about what they do, and we share ideas around the business. Each can inspire the other."
Although she spends most of her time in London, with Selfridges, she comes to Dublin every six weeks and visits Canada four times a year, for board meetings. "I am very lucky to have three cultures," she says, referring to the facts that her father is Canadian, that her mother, the former model Hilary Frayne, from Dún Laoghaire, is Irish and that Weston herself lives in London. "That knowledge informs the way you see the world. Each of the three stores shares an approach and a culture. I love Ireland and would love to spend more time here; the beach at Caherdaniel [ in Co Kerry] and our place in northern Ontario are my favourite places in the world."
The forthcoming season, she believes, has two strong themes. "It is all about questioning ideas of beauty: the Galliano show was all about that. Extremely refined couture is coming from Lanvin and Chloé, and then a much edgier, tough, quite punk look from Balenciaga and the Japanese designers. It is really interesting, the friction between the two. Last season's bohemian pin-up was Sienna Miller, but now it has gone much darker and more grown-up, with people like Dita Von Teese in the front line. Fashion always reacts to itself. So many grew up during the punk era - I guess I am part of that generation - and there is real interest in looking back at what it meant. I think it is right for now, because we areseeing the breaking down of some of the barriers and drawing high and low together." In practice, this might mean chocolates next to jewellery next to flowers, a concept that Weston is exploring.
In a business traditionally dominated by men, women such as Jane Shepherdson, at Topshop, and Weston are putting their stamps on the high street. At Selfridges, a monster of a store is being tamed by an exciting new mistress.