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After two years of work, Gucci’s new London flagship opens on New Bond Street on 5 September, joining a lineup of new stores on the street from luxury megabrands including Balenciaga, Burberry and Celine. Elevation is the buzzword that sums up the Gucci formula for the new space: the retail concept prioritises Gucci’s biggest spending customers and has a sharp focus on celebrating the brand’s history and artful storytelling.
The new 15,000-square-foot megastore at 144-146 New Bond Street replaces the previous boutique located at 34 Old Bond Street and comes at a pivotal time in Gucci’s journey. Sales at the Italian house have been stalling, and longtime president and CEO Marco Bizzarri is leaving in September (his departure was announced in July). Parent company Kering is grappling with the pressures around its lacklustre share performance and financials that lag other luxury groups, including LVMH and Richemont. Now, a reset at Gucci is underway, with new leadership in place and keen anticipation ahead of creative director Sabato de Sarno’s debut show at Milan Fashion Week on 22 September.
The new flagship is located in a historic Grade-II listed building, formerly home to several art galleries from as early as 1912. The ground floor features handbags, footwear, fine jewellery, women’s ready-to-wear and silk, while the lower ground floor houses men’s ready-to-wear, watches and small leather goods. On the upper levels are fragrances and timepieces, as well as a mezzanine dedicated entirely to the Gucci Valigeria travel collection and a Tudor Room displaying items from the Gucci archive in Florence, including bags spanning six decades from the 1930s.
On the very top floor is Europe’s first Gucci Salon — a new creative concept for VIP customers introduced in Los Angeles in April. The Salon features a curated edit of pieces and is the venue for made-to-measure and made-to-order pieces. It’s conceived to exude the atmosphere of an “elegant home”, according to Gucci. Its by-appointment nature offers “intimacy and discretion” for the brand’s top spenders, and “denotes a creative empathy between Gucci and its customers” through “creative conversation, exploration and amusement”, the brand says.
London remains one of the most active luxury retail markets in Europe, according to Savills. Much of the activity is focused on Bond Street, London’s long-standing luxury neighbourhood, although there’s been a luxury migration in terms of specific locale. Mega-brands are moving north towards New Bond Street, while the southern side — Old Bond Street — is increasingly seen as the favoured destination for watch and jewellery specialists.
In June, Burberry reopened its flagship on New Bond Street after two years of renovations. Across the road is Balenciaga, which unveiled a flagship — the brand’s largest in Europe — in March. Moncler, Jil Sander, Off-White, Michael Kors and Boss are among other brands planning to open new or relocated flagships on Bond Street in 2023 and beyond.
New Bond Street’s rise and rise
How else is the luxury brands’ favourite London street changing? There are now larger units with improved frontages that “meet the requirements for certain brands that want to showcase their full product range”, explains Marie Hickey, director of research at real estate firm Savills. Another driver is the Great Portland Estates’ Hanover Place scheme, which has focused on a wider transformation of the New Bond Street area since 2021. Brands are also getting a better deal as prime headline rents remain 20 per cent below pre-pandemic levels, although Gucci’s move will make the area even “more desirable” and push prices up, Hickey predicts.
Gucci’s flagship is being leased by Trophaeum Asset Management, which has built up a portfolio of properties around Bond Street, Albemarle Street and other prime locations in London. The company, which is reported to have paid £130 million, purchased the attractive retail block on New Bond Street in February 2020 from a firm controlled by banker Joseph Safra. “The street is so constrained in terms of supply, so property values continue to be high,” says Jonathan De Mello, founder and chief executive of JDM Retail, a strategic retail consultancy.
De Mello believes that it’s the right time for luxury brands to invest in upgrading their stores to cater for “true luxury” clients — which he defines as customers who spend over $40,000 consistently. “Aspirational customers want to buy luxury products but they aren’t able to do that consistently and their spend is falling,” he observes. “True luxury clients want to segment themselves away from the average customer that goes into a store, so there’s now a massive demand for VIP areas. It’s proven that if you have these spaces in your store, it will significantly add to the level of customer spend because they’re getting better service.”
Last summer, Balenciaga introduced a new dedicated couture store in Paris, while Chanel has been opening private boutiques for its top-spending customers, starting in key Asian cities. In December 2022, Brunello Cucinelli opened an appointment-only store in New York, a space conceived to give the sensation of stepping into the designer’s home. Even smaller but fast-growing Danish label Cecilie Bahnsen has opened a new headquarters to host private client appointments. Following Los Angeles and London, Gucci plans to extend its Salon to other key cities such as New York, Paris, Milan, Dubai, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Taipei.
The art connection
Gucci’s new store also reflects its longstanding commitment to the world of art, the brand says. A rotation of artworks curated by Truls Blaasmo, an independent art advisor and curator, will be available in-store for consumers to purchase — a first for the brand. These include works from both young and established artists, such as Liliana Moro, Jonny Niesche, Massimo Uberti, Joshua Woolford and Tim Etchells. A piece by Lucio Fontana will also be displayed in the Gucci Salon in October following its unveiling during Frieze.
“It’s about exclusivity, heritage and brand history — the three things that associations with art creates,” says De Mello. Through art, brands act as cultural curators and demonstrate shared values and interests with their audiences. An example is Tiffany & Co’s new 10,000-square-metre store on New York’s Fifth Avenue, intended to be a cornucopia of art and design, with around 40 artworks acquired by the LVMH-owned brand in the last two years, including Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Equals Pi painting, which featured in Tiffany’s 2021 ‘About Love’ campaign starring Jay-Z and Beyoncé.
“When [consumers] go into a store and there’s quality or novel art, it creates an exclusive VIP experience,” says De Mello.“The two trends [investing in VIP spaces and art] are not mutually exclusive. They’re synergistic because they act as a mechanism for elevation.”
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