Lance Chung: Who is the Ben Sherman man, and how has he changed over the years?
Mark Maidment: When I think about the man who has been wearing Ben Sherman throughout the company's lifetime, it's incredible. Ben Sherman didn't intend to dress the mods, which is a youth culture that seems to have lasted longer. Punk was very interesting, but it wasn't commercial. The mod look, which was a smart '60s kind of thing, seems to always come back and be featured. So we're incredibly lucky to be so closely associated with it. Ben Sherman didn't aim to dress those guys. What he was passionate about was shirts. He came back from America with the idea of creating this beautiful shirt that was influenced by the button-down collar, etc. I think with all youth cultures, there's a leader. And someone from the mod culture walked in, loved to dress like an Italian, saw this shirt in Brighton and said, “that is absolutely the shirt that I've been looking for. The collar was beautiful, everything about it – the cut, the shape, the fabrication, and the colour. Before Ben Sherman did the shirt, they were really only things you wore to work. You would wear pieces like knitwear and polos in a casual setting. So this was the beginning of the shirt becoming a fashion item. Who was wearing it then was a young guy who wanted to dress sharply, and dress sharper over the weekend. He wanted to show that he was a smart, young guy and spent more money thinking about what he would wear over the weekend then what he wore to work. And he was a modernist, I mean, that's where modernist comes from. That's kind of the first young group of guys who were saying they belonged to a culture of fast-living music, and the, “way we dress is really important throughout our culture”. So we were dressing this modernist guy, and over the decades, we had different guys buying into our look. By the time the ‘90s came, the brand was picked up by Brit pop because we had this connection to music. So any major British music culture that came along tended to gravitate to the Ben Sherman shirt. We found that some of our existing customers, particularly in the UK where we have a long history, were those younger guys, but were now much older. They had families, and their kids were growing up.
Now, especially now, with people being so aware and knowledgeable and intelligent and educated in how you can enjoy life, the modernist guy exists more than ever. There are these people who are on the web who love design and design innovation. They're excited by newness and freshness, and love provenance of not only product, but provenance of a brand and its history. Most importantly, they want to know that the brand is a modern brand, and one that is thinking forward. Particularly in the last 18 months, we've really focused on being a brand that is at the forefront of technology, design, talent, and more. So we've kind of gone full circle, in terms of whom we're dressing, with a consumer who's grown old with us, and that we're very proud of. Now we're attracting ourselves to a new modernist consumer, which we don't really put an age group to because it could be a person that's 21 or someone that's 51. It's about the attitude and level of design aesthetic. We're surrounding ourselves internally with very talented designers to make sure they're taking the brand name and really pushing it forward. We are dressing what we call the “Modernist of Today”, as we did in 1963, when we were dressing the modernist of the day back then. So, it's actually a really nice full circle of who we're dressing. I think our brand's never been in a more healthy, exciting place than it is today.
LC: What would you say is Ben Sherman's priority in dressing men now, as compared to when the brand first started out.
MM: One of the key things was that the brand, when it first started out, was just a shirt brand. It was world famous for shirts, and when I look at the brand now, it's evolved into this lifestyle brand. Which is what a lot of brands have done. And part of me thinks that brands should stick to what they do best, but I think it's ok if you still remain great at your core competence. If we remain as a great shirt brand, a global authority on great shirts, and I think we've re-established ourselves as this over the last couple years, then I think we have a right to take those attributes and the things that people rely on us for, which is great quality garments that wear well, fit well, and are of good value - you can take all those attributes and go, “actually, if we did outerwear, then I think people would like us doing outerwear, because people would come in and say, 'Ben Sherman's outerwear, like its shirts, are of great fabrication and interesting design”. And we've kind of applied that across a lot of different product groups, ranging from suiting to outerwear to footwear to accessories, so on and so forth. I think that that's been an enormous change for the brand. You can now buy into a complete lifestyle. I think that's the biggest change and it's really exciting. I think we're doing it, and doing it the right way. We're not just sticking the Ben Sherman brand name on a product.
LC: You opened a location on Savile Row. How does that fit into the evolution of what you just mentioned?
MM: We're very lucky that the smart, crisp shirt was our heritage and original product - for it to translate into formalwear suiting. You think of Sean Connery in the Bond movies with those beautiful suits, it still looks amazing today. We're a ‘60s brand and a shirt brand, so for us to do suits, it was a very natural evolution and something that was very easily accepted by the industry and the consumer. We're lucky cause Savile Row is the British tailoring street recognized around the world. So, when we had the opportunity to open there, we jumped at it. But I'll be very honest with you, there were a lot of people who were not happy with us, asking what right have we got to be on there. In reality, what's happened is that people have come, the store looks amazing, the music's incredible, and the people working in there are different. We didn't go there to fit in, we went in there and said, “we're going to be very Ben Sherman here.” And actually, people started to respect it and say, “it's quite fun having you here on the Row, it's interesting what you're doing, your brand suits the smarter aesthetic”, and of course young people are dressing so sophisticated, particularly menswear, and smart on almost every level. So it worked very well for us, and we enjoy it. It's not something we intend to roll out across the world, though. We do have really nice suits in our normal shops, and I'm pretty sure we'll have a small suit offering in the new Toronto store. What's amazing is that we're finding people are buying suits to wear on the weekend, not to work. They want to go out drinking, like they did in the ‘60s, and look really sharp doing so. I think that comes from a recession, where people are saying, “I can't afford a new car or a new house, but I can afford a nice, affordable suit that's going to make me feel like a million dollars on a Saturday when I go out.” I think that's a really, really good thing, and I think that's why we did it.
LC: How important was the location?
MM: The location was everything. To be honest, we were already doing some nice suits in our other stores. But just the opportunity came. And what happened on the Row, is down one side, you've got all the traditional guys that have been there for a hundred years or so, and then on the other side, you've got the new guys, like Lanvin and Richard James. We looked at it and said, it's not a war of the roses on this one, but actually it's quite nice that the Row is having this fresh, new development. But it just seemed like they were all down on one side. The shop we had was down on the newer side, and it just felt like the right thing to do. And that's why we made the decision.
LC: You mentioned that the Ben Sherman man has evolved as well as the company, as time has passed. With the opening of the location, however, did you find that there was a risk of alienating your more traditional and current customers, or was it something that you felt was the direction that your customers were going through.
MM: I think they came with us on it. I think we have a lot of fans of the brand who love to see us progress and experiment, and look to us for direction. They trust us in looking out for them in the sense of what direction menswear is heading. Not that our guys need their hands held or anything, but it's our job to be ahead of the game and to guide our fans. That's the fun part of the fashion industry, being affiliated with brands that are forward-thinking. I think they embraced it and thought it was great. You'll also see, it's very interesting out there right now especially with our new interim website with this progressive collection we have up, there are quite a few people out there that are absolutely not happy with that direction. It's funny because we still do our heritage collection, which is like the classic gingham, where the product is still there. But some people find it very hard to accept change. We have this sort of internal motto that you “change, or become irrelevant”. You have to do things at the right speed and the right way, but I believe and think it's very important that brands progress, which is not always to everyone's liking. So, we're going through an interesting time. And with that being said, if everyone loved what we were doing, I'd also be a bit surprised. When Range Rover designed the new car about nine years ago, I didn't like it. I remember thinking, “Oh my God, what they've done, it looks like a taxi!” And then, of course, 18 months later, you realize it's an amazingly beautiful design, and that makes me love that brand. They're forward thinking and visionary. It's good for people not to like certain things sometimes so they can discover and almost learn to like it. We don't get it right all the time, but we do like to push things forward.
LC: What is the customer experience like when you first walk into the store on the Row?
MM: It's a very small store. We kind of wanted an experience where it was a bit more rock and roll. A lot of the stores there don't have music, and we wanted to play some very modern music with a bit of the Rolling Stones, and other hints of our past, thrown in there. We are a very futurespective-thinking company. So 99% of the time, it'll be new music and new British bands. When you go into the store, one of the things we wanted was for people to feel like they were in a club – not like a nightclub, but a private club. When you go in, there's an interesting area where you go through the front door into almost like a reception area, and then another set of doors into the store. So even though it's small, you feel like you've passed through a corridor. When you get into the other part of the store, there is no visible tiller, which is all behind a hidden glass wall. The guy that will be serving you will probably be sitting on a chesterfield sofa we've got in there, flipping through his fabrics or doing his order from the last person he measured. You go in and you feel quite alive, you feel like you're in a private member's club, and you don't feel like you're in a shop because you can't see the till and the changing rooms are hidden. When you walk in, you'll see singular suits hanging on singular gold pegs, so it feels very premium and special, and not crowded at all, which is a lovely feature. And then we did a really quirky thing, where we stuck these British teacups upside-down on the ceiling, and painted them in the same colour. So it's this tiny little thing, where you'll look at it and think, “hang on, these guys don't take themselves too seriously. That's pretty fun!”
(Some of our favourite looks from the brand's Plectrum line!)
LC: What about the store that you are planning on opening in Toronto, which will be Ben Sherman's first stand-alone location in Canada?
MM: The new concept that we're opening in Toronto is a design that we worked on with a company called Brinkworth, who designed the concept for the All Saints stores. We did tell them, though, that whatever happens, it must not look like an All Saints store. We actually spent nearly 18 months with them, trying to come up with something with longevity and a real depth in thought process. It's so easy to design a concept in three or four months, roll it out, and then go, “you know what? It already looks tired.” We really wanted to live with the concept over the matter of many months while we tweet it and work it. We're very incredibly excited about the new concept – it's going to be a true, true experience. What's interesting is that there are three or four key elements to a store. One is the product, which I think we've covered with some great product that is a bit modern. Another is the look of the store, and we've got some incredibly interesting and interactive features in the stores. When I say interactive, we definitely have a feature, and I don't want to talk about it in too much detail because I want people to discover it themselves, but we definitely are, in a very new and innovative way, showing that we are the shirt location. If you want to know about shirts, learn about shirts, and have a great source of shirts, Ben Sherman's the place to go. We've also got some great and innovative windows that are also very interactive, and all the materials that we've used in the store are very authentic. There's nothing gimmicky in terms of the materials, it's all very beautiful and, in a very subtle way, is a nod to the ‘60s. We're also very focused on the level of service we have. We are going to the extra level to make sure that the people in the store are getting a supreme, high-level of knowledge about the brand and product, which I think is missing in a lot of retail experiences. There are brands that I love, that look great and have a great product. But I'll go in, and just be disappointed with the end result in terms of the knowledge in the store. So we're really spending a lot of time and effort to make sure that this comes across. This store experience will be a very fresh, new, and interesting one than what you've seen from Ben Sherman in the past. We're very excited.
LC: We're excited as well! It sounds truly like a unique consumer experience. Thank you so much for sitting down and chatting with us!
MM: Thank you! It was my pleasure.
Such a lovely collection like it so much.
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