Miss Selfridge to get makeover

Miss Selfridge’s new Oxford Circus flagship, due to open on 9 April, will showcase a brand makeover for the Arcadia teen fashion chain.

Miss Selfridge creative director Tim Whitmore says, “We’ve been looking at all areas of in-store design for about 18 months.”

Miss Selfridge employed Belgian design consultant Créneau International to handle the first stage of creating the new concept last year. Then it took further development in-house.

Whitmore says that the starting point for the project is “the stock is hero. Everything that we’ve done in the redesign is a canvas for the clothing.”

The 558m2 store will be the first to display a new logo, with the colour changed from red to pink, in edge-lit acrylic signage.

In-store the redesign features new display equipment, a “lifestyle” accessory area, wall displays and “video pods”, designed and manufactured by Kunick Leisure. This will enable shoppers to have an Mpeg (compressed digital movie file) of themselves produced that can be sent on a Miss Selfridge, headed e-mail to six friends.

According to Whitmore, other design features include windows with mirrored arches and an escalator on which images will be projected in an “early 1980s neon grafitti in Blondie Rapture style”.

Whitmore says Miss Selfridge will be monitoring the success of the rebrand closely and focus groups will be used to guage consumer reaction. If the redesign is a success “it could go to Edinburgh, Leeds and Birmingham,” he says.

Whitmore will not comment on how much the exercise is costing, but says that it was the biggest project that he has worked on in his eight years at Miss Selfridge.