Haute Hackett: expanding brand opens on New Bond Street, adds premium line

By

Nigel TAYLOR

Published
Nov 17, 2023

With an already impressive portfolio of strategically located quality stores across London, it would always be good to hold Hackett in a game of retail Monopoly. Especially now. The high-end menswear retailer has just opened at one of the world’s most recognised addresses, New Bond Street. Number 69, to be precise, taking its tally in the UK capital to 12 stores.

New Bond Street now forms an axis of “West End excellence” joining its Savile Row townhouse, Regent Street and Jermyn Street locations. Important too, the new store has opened in time for retail’s important Golden Quarter.

“Bond Street is a big statement for us, it was key to our progression,” Dan Slater, Vice-President of Hackett Retail for Spain-based parent company AWWG, told FashionNetwork.com 

“The important thing for us is to be among our peers. This is our showcase store and a reflection of what the brand’s capable of, exclusively housing our Savile Row collection [its key premium ready-to-wear line] here and, of course, Bond Street is where the high-quality customer shops.”

And there's no arguing with that, because when it comes to the highest level of luxury retail in London, Bond Street is a must have for a brand to be part of the elite club.

The store

Slater added: “Our concept store on Bond Street allows us to present a boutique environment. The store is all about comfort and creating an experience… allowing customers to enjoy the shopping experience”.

The store itself “reflects the brand’s expression of luxury, characterised by its renowned British twist, in a strong statement that the brand has found a new home in the legendary street, consolidating its presence in the capital”.
 
Across two floors, its interior design blends classic detailing with contemporary design.

The Georgian architecture details that are part of Hackett’s heritage feature alongside its mid-century-modern soft furniture, contemporary British design wallpapers, artwork by Hormazd Narielwalla, as well as vintage and unique décor pieces, inspired by founder Jeremy Hackett’s “passion for exploration, discovery and antiques”. 

Some familiar elements, taken from Hackett’s 14 Savile Row townhouse, reappear in the store, such as the emerald-green panelled walls of the first-floor members room that also includes an in-house barber.

Here, visitors “can indulge in Hackett’s personal tailoring, made-to-measure and bespoke tailoring services”.

Premium line

The new store is also the first in the world to be fully dedicated to that Hackett Savile Row ready-to-wear collection, the premium line within the brand’s clothing ranges (Hackett Mayfair, Hackett London and a sports range). 

In that respect, it echoes a number of other major brands occupying space on Bond Street in that many of them use such spaces to house their most exclusive RTW products.

The Savile Row collection, designed by Gianni Colarossi — Vice President of Hackett Product at AWWG — is inspired by the brand's tailoring roots but, in more recent seasons, has been developed into a full lifestyle offering, with luxurious fabrics and details “to create a modern and relevant collection for today’s customer”.
 
Under the banner ‘driven by tradition, inspired by today’ The No.14 Savile Row collection (to give it its full name) “perfectly marries the values of tradition with a contemporary feel”. The AW23 collection is crafted with the expected fine fabrics in “modern and elegant hues”. Seasonal colours of ecrus, browns and greens are paired back with rich navy and warm greys. 

The colours are worked across coats, suits and jackets, in wools, silks and cashmere. Layering items in cotton, silk blends, and merino wool give warmth and comfort within chinos, polos and knitwear.

In addition, the collection includes a capsule of hybrid outerwear. Sitting within the impeccably tailored range the lightweight and multifunction outerwear recognises the obvious demand for such items at this time of year.

Slater told us the Savile Row collection reflects how much Hackett has evolved over 10 years or so “to interpret consumer demands the way men are dressing, that’s the natural course of change. But we also have to stick to our roots and trying to be British wherever we can be, but also moving things forward.”

Brand strength

 
Overall, Hackett is continuing to grow under owner AWWG (All We Wear Group), which also owns Pepe Jeans and Façonnable, as well as the distributor in Spain and Portugal for Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger.
 

Slater continued: “As a brand, the last 18 months have been very strong for us so we’re very proud of where we’ve got to and this [new] store is a testament to that success.”

Ahead of Hackett’s annual results, due to be released in December, he said the numbers are going to reflect a real success story. 

“It will show we’re continuing to grow year-on-year and the figures [the 12 months to April] reflect our best year ever. But having achieved that, means you have to continue on that path.

“We’re also well aware we’ve got our key three [trading] months ahead of us. Not taking anything for granted but we believe we’ve got a good enough plan to see us successfully through this period. Our service and stock proposition is strong and we think traffic will continue to grow in key areas and key markets.

Hackett’s progress is already a long way on from the darker days of the pandemic from which it evolved “relatively unscathed”.

“Of course, there were some difficult times back then,” Salter explained with admirable understatement. “When 60-70% of your business comes from suiting and 30% of your business comes from tourism and suddenly no one’s wearing a suit and there are no tourists, that can leave you quite exposed!

“But we are now even bigger than pre-pandemic so while the suiting business has come back in a slightly different way… the way people are now wearing suits and the way people are dressing down, we’ve taken that on board and adapted and prospered.
 
“Our ability to pivot helped us by offering Hackett’s breadth of line, from the most casual to the most formal. This was a blessing. 

“We have a strong casualwear essence in our line, we have sports collections [promoted by former champion racing driver Jenson Button], heritage collections… so we were able to recover quickly post-pandemic. The customer had shifted somewhat but we were able shift in line with them. There were a lot of brands unable to do that at the speed we could. It enabled us to take some market share.”

Quality customers

He noted that while London isn’t yet back up to the same pre-pandemic tourist numbers, “importantly the spend is up and the quality of traffic coming into the stores is far greater and the environment is far stronger.
 
“I expect London to keep going from strength to strength bringing tourists back. To quote local figures, Regent Street is still down 17% on pre-pandemic numbers and that’s a big chunk of customers to be missing, but we’re able to offset this by the product lines we’re offering, married to our strong service proposition in store.”

While Hackett’s global footprint currently numbers 67 stores (across outlets and stores), its customer base is strongest across Europe.

“London is our core market but we’re equally strong in France, Spain, Germany and we know the euro traveller is still our biggest proportion of customers in other markets. But equally we can see we are growing spend in the United States and the UAE and whether that spend is coming from online or by them travelling we know there’s an opportunity to grow those markets.”

So Hackett is keen to continuing looking at international opportunities. Having opened a number of European stores this year, the next phase of the expansion plan will be to focus on looking further afield, including Mexico  (it has four stores there, all doing very well, Slater said).

“But of course we know that the UAE is important and through franchise, we are looking at some opportunities there, as well as in the US. 

“These are both big opportunities but we need to do it correctly. The growth needs to be organic and it’s not necessarily a sprint to get where we want to be. We want to make good informed decisions over the months and years to continue this profitable growth were seeing.”