As Luxury Shopping Evolves, It’s Smaller Brands That are Finding New Ways to Connect with Customers

Take a stroll through one of the capital’s shopping postcodes and, at prime time, you’ll likely see an orderly line of customers forming outside each designer boutique. Queuing culture might now be part of the experience at behemoth luxury brands, but do today’s customers have the patience or the desire to shop under such circumstances?

The Business of Fashion’s founder and CEO, Imran Amed, was already questioning the logic in a newsletter published in October 2023: “This is something I have encountered everywhere from Bond Street to Bicester Village, and what’s bizarre is that sometimes these stores seem to have massive queues outside while the store inside looks completely empty.”

This is one of the reasons why, outside the world of heritage maisons, smaller luxury brands are finding a different approach to making their customer feel valued, one that puts a premium on an experience that’s more human. This can range from offering appointments in-store to guarantee a one-on-one experience, to book clubs and private spaces where shoppers can actually meet-and-greet with the designer.

At Rejina Pyo’s flagship store on London's Upper James Street, for example, customers have been treated to an ice-up pop-up this summer, ‘A taste of Seoul,’ with flavours including hojicha and buckwheat, yuja and sweetcorn.

There’s also a move away from a standard retail format entirely. In September 2024, Jennifer Chamandi, the shoe designer whose fan club includes Amal Clooney, Beyoncé and Meghan Markle, opened what she calls 'The Apartment', an appointment and invitation-only sanctuary just around the corner from Savile Row.

“It is really our antidote to the overexposure and pace of luxury as our woman seeks something more elevated, intimate, and discreet,” says Chamandi. It’s a space that centres the bespoke experience, where shoppers are invited to create their "dream shoes”, and also plays host to a roster of events such as poetry evenings and caviar tastings with Chamandi. “I see it really as a return to a very traditional and discreet way of consuming luxury,” she says.

This personal touch is one that strikes a chord with luxury-contemporary brands looking to offer their customers not simply clothes but a sense of community. For Amy Powney, founder of AKYN, this is what’s being lost through faceless shopping experiences.

“We're living in an age where everything is so impersonal and disconnected. We can buy something with one click of a button without any interaction or appreciation of that product. We often don't see or understand the value of things anymore,” says Powney, who’s refurbishing her studio to create a showroom where she can welcome customers, or ‘Kynfolk’, in the very near future.

Its purpose is manifold: to create meaningful relationships with people buying the brand, to educate them about how the clothes have been crafted, to provide the gold standard of customer service and to reduce the number of returns. “I want to create that human interaction. To allow our community the chance to step into our atelier, to slow down, and connect with my team and the clothes themselves,” she says.