Forget coals to Newcastle, how about track pants to America? The country that first turned clothes for doing sports into clothes for doing pretty much everything is on the verge of a phenomenon I am going to call Me+Em-ification.
This week the British brand that made elasticated waist trousers smart and blazers casual, that put sporty detailing such as zips and toggles on dresses and tailoring alike, announced that it is taking on America, courtesy of a £55 million investment led by Highland Europe.
I happen to think that taking America on is precisely what Me+Em will do. Not just because the announcement also revealed that a company started 13 years ago with £100,000 of savings and a remortgage is now valued at £130 million.
And not just because I have been apprised of the results of what Clare Hornby, the brand’s founder, calls “a two-year test phase”, which has resulted in 700 per cent US-only growth. This has been delivered by way of Me+Em’s canny marketing mash-up of old-fashioned look books through the letterbox and celebrity placements, plus newfangled “social media acquisition” (when a brand pays to appear in the feeds of people whose viewing and buying history would suggest that its products will be catnip).
I am also confident that Me+Em is going to do well because I know how good it is at what it does. On the one hand, it finesses street style to make it look grown-up. On the other, it finesses classics such as the blazer or the tea dress to make them look youthful.
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In other words, it finds an aesthetic middle ground, one that works incredibly well for women who don’t want to do anything too dramatic, fashion-wise, but want to appear up to date. I have recommended the label to friends and family members ranging from their twenties to their seventies, who represent pretty much every body type and lifestyle you can imagine, and it has never yet disappointed them or me.
Another standout is what Hornby calls “the quality-to-price proposition”. Because Me+Em’s primary business model is direct-to-consumer, it cuts out costs, which means it can deliver more for the money. It may not be a cheap brand, or at least not in the strictest sense of the word, but in terms of price-per-wear — the only economy that really matters — it is one of the best.
It’s a sign of how far Me+Em has expanded upon its original athleisure proposition that this week’s bestseller is this yellow tulle skirt (£185, meandem.com). It’s a sign of how, at the same time, it remains true to its origins that these green and navy crêpe track pants (£185) are one of 30 iterations on offer on the website.
When we spoke yesterday, Hornby’s speech was peppered, as always, with terms such as “fashion Lego” and “outfit building”. For her it’s important that each individual piece is designed to work with other pieces in present and past collections. Obvious, you might think, but it’s not the industry norm.
She talks too about “the three Fs: flattering, functional, for ever”. Certainly, I have pieces in my wardrobe from the earliest days of Me+Em; not quite for ever yet, but you get my point. And they are still there, of course, because they are flattering and functional.
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Hornby is as much as anything else an anthropologist, extremely savvy about what people want to wear and why. At the moment it is all about “more relaxed workwear and more dressy casualwear. Our smarter looks are selling really well — blazers, dresses, occasionwear.” Hornby knows that the modern woman’s wardrobe is a game of two halves. To have turned that into a coherent whole is her genius.
