The daily mail
By Liz Jones
Sept 09

Unable to know our own minds; we don’t wait, we don’t save, we don’t cherish fashion, we just throw it away?

'I'm going to give you affordable luxury': George Davies on his next fashion brand.

George Davies has changed the face of fashion three times already - Next, George, Per Una - and now he's got a fourth retail revolution up his double-cuff sleeve. So what’s his latest project - and will it work? Liz Jones investigates.

I don’t know about you but I’m tired of shopping. Tired of braving the black-suited male bouncers at Versace, spending a lot of money on a pair of trousers that are far too long and being told snootily, ‘We can get them altered for you, but it will cost extra, and take about a week.’

No, I want them now! I am tired of standing, with an armful of clothes, in the flagship store of Marks & Spencer in Marble Arch, and waiting and waiting for help, and when no one comes, dropping the bundle on the floor and walking out. I am tired of buttons falling off my Miu Miu jacket the first time it’s worn. Of my Bottega Veneta dress perpetually falling down because it’s too big in the bust; I bought it from net-a-porter.com and was too lazy to return it.


I’m tired of going into Harvey Nichols, asking a sales assistant whether the store still stocks Tse cashmere, to be told, ‘How should I know?’ I am tired of loud music in shops. Of rails – in Kew, Topshop – stuffed so tightly with merchandise that I cannot extract a garment to try it on.

‘Shopping is no longer enjoyable. The people in the stores are not helpful. So I decided to launch something different’

Shopping for clothes has become a nightmare, not a pleasure. Even if you patronise the high end you cannot be sure of quality, fit or service. At the low end, well… We think fashion has become democratised now we can all afford cashmere, but what has really happened is that we spend more money on rubbish: badly made, unethically sourced. Nothing fits, nothing lasts, everything creases.

Now there is an economic crisis, we no longer know what to do: purchase at Primark, or buy just one thing we love and we need and that we hope won’t date? Into this maelstrom of disappointment and debt comes George Davies with what he claims is a big, new idea. While many men with his age and track record would sit back and enjoy the spoils, he says that one day, out on his yacht, he grew bored, and realised that there was a yawning gap in the market.

‘Affordable luxury!’ he shouts, enthused, suddenly boyish. ‘I want to give women great design, the very finest fabrics and fit – so important, how a garment hangs and hugs and falls – and, above all, informed, expert service. I want women to enjoy shopping again, not to feel exhausted, ripped off, ignored.’

George Davies is an unlikely hero if ever there was one. He was the man responsible, remember, for giving us the first £99 men’s wool suit, courtesy of his George at Asda label, launched in 1990, which put fashion in the supermarket aisles for the very first time.