从纯线上到 Sloane Street 驻店：Tove 两位创始人谈独立品牌怎么开线下店

Welcome to the Scoop: a weekly email series in which I quiz fashion insiders on the stories of the week. This will be a way for the Vogue Business community to synthesize and reflect on the latest headlines and get a little inside scoop every Friday.

This week’s guests are Tove co-founders Camille Perry and Holly Wright. I first met Holly and Camille a few years ago through Purple PR’s Lydia Steele. However, I had already found myself doing some wistful shopping on their website a year or so before that. I remember scrolling down the Dresses page and thinking somebody had designed a collection just for me.

It’s one of Tove’s strengths. Holly and Camille have built a London brand steeped in the every woman — or at least the every woman with a stressful city job, maybe a kid or two, and an endless list of things to do. The two met at Topshop — once a mecca for the everygirl — where they both started their careers in the early 2010s and went on to become head of design and head of buying, respectively.

They left Topshop before its closure, launched Tove in 2019, and have since been growing their business slowly and intentionally, following its own needs over industry trends. For instance, they show when it makes sense to do so, and when it doesn’t, they do something else. Today, we are talking about that something else.

Hi Camille and Holly, what’s the scoop?

Camille: We are opening a residency on Sloane Street in early November. We had a residency in Mayfair this time last year. It was the first time we had a space to meet our customers, and we realized the limitations that come with running a DTC brand when it comes to building that relationship.

How long do you think you will be in Sloane Street?

Camille: This one is meant to go on until the end of January. But we’re hoping that there’s an opportunity for it to continue on further. We put a lot of thought into finding the right space, in the right neighborhood, with the right adjacencies and the right footfall. We’ve been talking to estates for a really long time. The British Fashion Council (BFC) put us in touch with the Cadogan Estate, and this space came up.

How come you went West this time, and didn’t stay in Mayfair?

Camille: Holly and I have spent years trying to figure out the best spot for us. Right now, Sloane Street feels like the buzziest place to be. We loved Mayfair, especially the historical aspect of it, but maybe it’s not the most neighborhoody, so it wasn’t great for discovery. If we had stayed there for a long time, maybe it would have been OK, as we would have built up a reputation.

Holly: In the Sloane Street space, we get incredible brand adjacencies — there are the dress brands like Zimmerman and Erdem, which is important for us. At the same time, in the Mayfair store, the top-performing category was denim, where fit is critical. You really want to come in and compare sizes. So having a wardrobe-based brand with a huge denim business like Toteme across the road will also hopefully be beneficial and give us a lot of learnings.

If Tove was a person, where would she live?

Holly: I mean, she’s all over London. But when looking at the postcodes in our data, there’s definitely a pull to the west and southwest as a primary. Then it kind of scatters everywhere; there’s a lot of North and East for sure.

What needs to happen for you guys to be able to turn the residency into a permanent store?

Camille: I think Cadogan Estate is really keen to make sure that the neighborhood has the right brand mix. They’re very careful. Through all the conversations we’ve had, they have shown us they are happy to begin with something temporary if it gives a brand the experience, data, and opportunity to cultivate the customer. Roksanda, which is also down the road, started as a residency and is now permanent, so that is a great example.

Are you worried in any way about the looting in Europe moving to London and affecting the new store?

Holly: We definitely talked about security, right? It’s more about the safety of the team — that’s what sprung to mind when we saw the news. We’re an independent business, and our team is small and intentional. The security and safety of our team is our main concern.

Camille: We have to be hopeful that given the level of activity in Europe, the UK government has set contingency plans in place should anything break out across the UK.

In my experience, it’s much harder to riot in London than in Europe.

Holly: I think culturally, people in some European cities are more ready to take to the streets to make sure their government understands their views and opinions.

Camille: The British historically have been less active in this way. Although in recent times, we have seen this start to change.

I am going to completely change the subject. What were your first jobs in fashion?

Holly: Mine was actually at Topshop as soon as I graduated. The team was very small, and I was one of two design assistants. We did everything. I’ve designed logos for pajamas, all sorts of things. It really exposed me to all the categories.

What about you, Camille?

Camille: I was a buyer’s administrative assistant for a brand called Principles, which no longer exists, but was part of the same Arcadia group as Topshop. I was there first, and then I went to Topshop after a year. Principles was run by Liz Houghton, who now runs the company Mint Velvet. I bumped into her the other night at an event, and we got to talking about that time. Starting as a buyer’s admin assistant was a brilliant way to understand every single aspect of the business.

We saw a lot of seemingly GLP-1-inspired trends on the runway this season. And sizes are shrinking in the stores too, according to our size inclusivity report. Do you see that reflected in the requests of your clients?

Holly: We have seen some of this reflected in our wholesale requests, and in certain markets, our best-selling sizes have definitely shifted towards the smaller end of the spectrum. Customer preferences can vary between markets, although I think it is difficult to attribute those shifts to any one factor.

Camille: What I think is important is that, as an industry, we remain conscious of the relationship between the silhouettes we create, the customers we are responding to and the women we represent. That becomes particularly relevant in the ways we communicate the brand to our audience. This includes the runway, where the conversation extends beyond commercial demand to the broader question of representation of the range of women who see themselves reflected in fashion.

Is there anything that can be done about runway representation?

Holly: I think it is a really important conversation, and one that the industry needs to keep having. For independent brands, there are practical challenges around sampling and production, particularly when casting can be confirmed very close to a show. It’s been tough to get models in London in recent seasons because their agencies will often skip the city and take them directly to Milan. Creating a broader range of samples requires significant investment and planning, and it can be difficult to accommodate that within the resources available to a smaller business.

Camille: Inclusivity is so much about what we do and what we stand for. Making sure that we have clothes in the collection that are flattering for all, whether it’s size, skin tone, or age, is a massive consideration. I think that consideration needs to extend to how women are represented across the industry, too. There is an opportunity to think more holistically about this, and to build it into the process from the outset, rather than treating representation as a final decision made in the days leading up to a show.

Kim Jones just launched his own brand. Phoebe Philo is arguably winning the game with her independent brand and not taking part in fashion weeks. Meanwhile, the designer reshuffle at the big luxury players seems never-ending. Is that the future? Running your own brand, as you guys do?

Camille: A lot of those brands are backed by the same conglomerates that once employed them. Everything’s more achievable when you have money behind you, obviously. Phoebe Philo has this really strong point of view, and the impact she’s had on the industry is huge. It made total sense for her to set up her own brand. But that’s not the case with everybody.

Why did you guys start your own brand?

Holly: I think definitely to have more control over things and more freedom when it comes to how we spend our time.

Camille: It was also about our point of view. We looked around and couldn’t see our ethos articulated elsewhere the way we would. There are financial constraints when you are truly independent, and the responsibility and pressure are all yours. But the freedom to run your business the way you want is priceless.

Catch up with last week’s Scoop with Osama Chabbi here.