I’m giving GIVe the thumbs down
7 October, 2009 at 8:38 pm 1 comment
I’m having a couple of days off and went to the local big shopping centre/ mall/ retailtainment destination Meadowhall today. Incidentally, having sat through a lot of local shopper focus groups over the years, I can report that most people round here call it MeadowHell…
Aaaaanyway, Meadowhall had a shiny new branch of GIVe open, so I popped in to have a look. GIVe is the brand new retail offering from George Davies, the man behind Next, George at Asda and M&S’s Per Una. There is a philanthropic element to GIVe in a percentage-of-profits way, but the G stands for George, the IV for his fourth womenswear brand and the e for the online element, apparently.
I had really high hopes for GIVe as a new source of smart-clothes-for-work and some of the items on the GIVe website looked lovely but once inside the store I was really disappointed.
The fabrics were obviously of good quality and the shop floor staff were very smiley but the actual designs were Far Too Fussy, like the worse excesses of Per Una (womenswear brand venture #3). I’m sure there were probably some lovely basic pieces hidden in there somewhere, but all the middle aged frill and fuss (or if we’re bring kind, ‘embellishment’) gave me unpleasant flashbacks to fashion crimes I found inside a mail order catalogue aimed at women of a certain age when I was trying to reposition it.
I was out shopping with my Dad, who spent all his working life in fashion retail and his opinion was that the shopfit was so basic, off the shelf and modular that they could clear out the stock and fixtures overnight to empty the unit if they had to. Which doesn’t really inspire confidence either…
The evidence. I rest my case.
Entry filed under: fashion, reviews. Tags: George Davies, GIVe.
1. Charles | 8 October, 2009 at 5:39 am
It’s easy to spot the Chinese mainlanders here in Hong Kong. I spotted a family adorned in the usual frilly lace and glitter numbers that they like to where which to be generous is down to having a limited understanding of international standard fashion.
They stopped in their tracks and stared at a shop window display which stopped me because I knew it had to be awful and so I swiveled my head round to be confronted by my worst fear. Ah so that’s where they shop is it I asked. Or rather, that’s where the shopkeepers tap into the China market :)