Topshop is adored by style hounds. As it prepares to open its flagship Irish store, Deirdre McQuillan meets Jane Shepherdson, one of the most powerful women in retailing
It is three o'clock on a late autumn afternoon, and Topshop's flagship Oxford Circus branch, in London, is thronged with shoppers. Some stylish young things are sizing up eyelet-stud hobo bags or bubble skirts; others patiently queue downstairs for the changingrooms. Cut-glass accents mingle with Cockney tones, students with mothers, foreigners with locals. It feels like a modern bazaar. Adored by style hounds, and darling of the fashion media, Topshop sells not cheap designer knock-offs but innovative fashion at down-to-earth prices.
Twenty-eight thousand people visit the Oxford Circus store each day; half of them buy something. The chain gives space to young student fashion, commissions affordable ranges from top designers and stocks limited-edition bargains. With profits topping £100 million (€145 million) this year and further expansion on the way, its success is squarely attributed to Jane Shepherdson, Topshop's brand director, and her creative team.
The office of the UK high street's most powerful woman is in the London headquarters of Arcadia, Topshop's parent company, in the corner of a vast open-plan floor of merchandisers and designers. Awards are strewn around her room, displayed almost as an afterthought. Shepherdson, an elfin 40-something, is small and slight with a mane of blond hair and a quick smile. An inspiring leader, she seems to be adored by all who work with her.
Her transformation of what had been a cheap and cheerful high-street store - "a sleeping giant" - began in l999, "when we decided we had to take a position and be an authority; we had to be proactive on style". Now, she says: "If you love fashion, you will get it in Topshop. We had to make some brutal decisions in terms of what we had to buy, but speed and risk-taking are good fun."
From an academic background in the English city of Bristol - her mother is a biochemist - Shepherdson was considered the black sheep of the family when she joined Topshop, in the mid 1980s, as a business-graduate trainee. She rose quickly through the ranks. "If you do something, you have to be the best at it. If you are absolutely delighted by something and love it, how can you not make money? Everybody is extremely creative, and you have to allow that to grow and give it space. At the end of the day, it is just clothes. If you can lead the way, it is fun." Fun is a word that crops up frequently.
Shepherdson's style and gutsy personality - and those of her team, marketing head Jo Farrelly, who is from Dublin, and advertising head Ronnie Cooke Newhouse - determine house style. "We recruit people who are like us. We are not frilly and girlie and trashy."
A daring innovation was the introduction of style advisers, a VIP service more usually associated with upscale stores. "We wanted a good service, and we pick people to do it who are stylish, who know trends and are very confident. They will shop for you, they will look after families, they are unfazed by anybody and they are very honest. It is not 'We can style you' but 'We can give you a service without any obligation to buy'. They do the legwork for people with no time to shop."
Topshop's customers are aged from 11 to 50. "They are desperate to have the latest thing, and they want instant gratification." Surprise and excitement hold their interest and loyalty. Production runs can be limited to as few as 10 pieces or extend to as many as 30,000. Shepherdson cites the "astonishingly good value" of a Topshop wool coat. "It is virtually handmade in Manchester, and the cost price is almost the same as the selling price of €120, so what you are getting is the equivalent of a €400 coat." There have been mistakes, but they can be rectified quickly. "Last autumn 30,000 Peter Pan knee-length coats with fur collars were a complete disaster; they were too similar to a style from the previous year."
One of the hardest challenges for a young designer, she says, is to know how to interpret trends. Topshop's drainpipe trousers have just sold out, and its pencil and tulip skirts are selling fast, too. Its miniskirts died a death, however, and cropped trousers are last season. Killer heels are back, though. "The whole 'lady' thing is back, but we don't really want to look like ladies; it has to become hard-edged," she says with a wink. The essence of Shepherdson's approach to style, however, is dressing down. "It's about not looking as if you've tried too hard. I think that next spring will continue the shift away from vintage and hippy into something more modern, more structured and more tailored. Fabrics are getting more interesting and exciting, shot with metal, breaking new ground."
Despite the success of Topshop's catwalk show during London Fashion Week - it was the first time a shop had staged one - she has reservations about expansion. "At the moment it is all very personal, and we know each other very well; getting bigger would require a great shift. When we started, it was all about creating something, not about business with profit, and we were gobsmacked when the profits started coming through. There is no formula. You buy absolutely gorgeous things and put a bit of effort into it and get the return from every angle. For a young woman it is a fun environment in which to work. It is never boring. You are in the market - you look at what people are wearing, observing and reacting - and you are in charge of multimillion-pound budgets. It is quite a liberating thing."
Topshop's new Dublin branch is due to open in the former Habitat building, on St Stephen's Green, on November 11th. "We are very excited about Dublin and are determined that it will be like another Oxford Circus store, with its own character, particularly coming from Irish designers and Irish concessions. It will be a complete one-off," she says. And if Irish designers do well, their ranges will go to other stores. That could include Topshop's first transatlantic outlet, in New York, which opened in September.