Anya Hindmarch Changes Strategy

Anya Hindmarch´s shows are a highlight on the London Fashion Week schedule - a visual feast that has seen the designer's team construct suburban houses, human conveyor belts and fairground rides - but the brand will take the Sunday morning slot no more.

The company, which has been ramping up its ready-to-wear offering in recent seasons, has announced that it will abandon a traditional biannual show format and instead orchestrate four “consumer happenings” each year. Plans for a special project during London Fashion Week in February are already in motion, and will demonstrate the new see-now-buy-now strategy.

The goal is to allow the consumer “to really engage with the brand’s creativity on and offline when the product is available in store,” WWD reports of the business decision, which follows the success of its Build-a-Bag collection in May and Anya Smells in November.

The announcement is the latest in a series of industry shifts to fashion week show schedules. Earlier this week Creatures of the Wind declared that the brand’s business model would work on a project basis, while last week Balenciaga committed to combining its men’s and women’s shows for AW18to join the likes of Gucci, DSqaured2, Bottega Veneta, Burberry et al, who already do so.

Though Hindmarch joins British brands Mulberry and Burberry in adopting a see-now, buy-now model, many brands who originally adopted the format have pulled back. Tom Ford, one of the first major houses to test out the reactionary way of selling, said that "the business model is ahead of the current retail environment", and that the decision had "lost a month of selling" rather than facilitating consumer reach and sales.