Creativity beats cash (even in fashion)

Back in the days when I was running a jeans business, every 6 months we would take part in trade shows.  This was where you would ‘set out your stall’ and all of the cool stores would come and place their orders for next season.  Our first shows ever were Coterie in New York and Project in Las Vegas. 

The scale of these shows was incredible and Radcliffe was up against some of the richest denim brands in the US – opposite True Religion, who had built the equivalent of a western saloon bar, down the road Seven had recreated a Los Angeles Penthouse and Earnest Sewn I think had built an entire log cabin.  Everyone had also spent a great deal on amazing models and imagery. 

 How was  a small British brand to compete?  We had no money to build a trade stand, so instead creativity triumphed over budget.  We found a beautiful photo of an English drawing room with windows looking out onto an English garden in full bloom, bathed in sunlight (we were selling spring summer).  We blew this up into room size wallpaper and lined our trade stand with it, recreating effectively the drawing room of an English stately home.  Anyway, it was very cheap and simple, but all the buyers were very enchanted…

I was reminded of this when I was looking at these 2 brilliant retail concepts.  Both are clearly inexpensive but absolutely beautiful.  The first is the Trading Museum from Comme des Garcons in Tokyo – the only shop fittings are display cabinets from the V&A – filled with CDG products.  I will admit to being a bit of a display cabinet addict though…

The second pictured is a pop up from Aesop at the Merci store in Paris, in place for 1 month.  Again, super simple, lots of brown boxes with Aesop on them contained within a fishing net.

(Suzy Radcliffe)