Besides selling an astounding array of 200 women's fashion brands – and most all of them as exclusives – Friday's opening on Regent Street of the first London boutique by Anthropologie, the eclectic American retailer of hip feminine clothing and stylish homeware, will present a living wall, the first in a retail space. The vertically climbing garden which dominates the sweeping, 10,000-foot retail space, incorporates 18,000 plants sourced from 14 different species.
Some 200 metres high, it reaches up from the foot of a 50-ton steel and iridescent glass staircase to a skylight hovering over the three-storey space. The presence of these dramatic decorative fixtures will also do much of the legwork to announce the opening of the first Anthropologie outside the USA.
Word-of-mouth buzz has consistently spread about the sartorial journey of a label which evolved from an upscale sportswear line conceived by Urban Outfitters in 1990. Made from chiffon and silk, the Anthropologie label was decidedly more feminine than the denim, T-shirts and downtown cool merchandise defining Urban Outfitters' look. It caught on just as research conducted by women's apparel firms revealed that "customers were less interested in dressing themselves than decorating their homes," Glenn Senk, Anthropologie's president, explained.
Parent company Urban Outfitters nurtured Anthropologie as its sophisticated sibling. Women's Wear Daily described it as "a New Age style emporium targeted at older shoppers who have moved beyond or outgrown the more freewheeling Outfitters format. Think of [Anthropologie] as an Urban Outfitters for adults."
Every 12 weeks, an in-house team of set designers curates within each Anthropologie boutique an unusual, individual atmosphere.
"Anthropologie has to be experienced," its European buying director Olivia Richardson explained last week as she led my tour of the new Regent Street retail space.
Our starting point was the household department. Here, we reclined upon a sofa propped up with legs carved of wood sourced from a fallen tree on Chichester's Goodwood Estate. It is part of a furniture line conceived for Anthropologie by British interior designers Clarke & Reilly.
"Everything is for sale," continued Richardson, mounting the staircase and bypassing the chandeliers which the South African art collective Magpie has constructed from recycled objects. (One hangs in the White House.) We halted at shelves where red and gold brocade pencil skirts were sandwiched between stacks of hard-bound Emily Brontë as well as Jane Austen classics. Next we stopped by a pine table where an arrangement of cobalt blue "knitted" bowls by South African ceramicist John Bauer complemented a neat stack of chic indigo denim trousers by London's Made in Heaven. In the bedding department, there were Ikat-print satin quilts tossed around on the floor not far from a burnished gold clothing rack. From it suspended an intriguing lingerie line produced by a Los Angeles textile designer at Richardson's request. "I met her through a friend and absolutely loved her prints so she made up these sets for us from leftover fabric."
We ceased our exploration of Anthropologie about an hour later by sniffing Volcano, the perkily scented hand-poured candle by Capri Blue, although the most refreshing thing about the tour were the prices. While the candle cost £24, the knickers were merely £14. Big-ticket items, from party dresses to blazers, fell beneath £150 and while the furniture reaches just beyond £1,000, every piece is a handmade original.
Just as Topshop's arrival back in February on Manhattan's West Broadway thoroughfare satisfied its cult following of young, fashion-forward Americans who visit London purely to shop at its Oxford Circus superstore, Anthropologie opening for business in the UK will satiate a similarly obsessive need among its tribe of British female shoppers. "It is my favourite shop in the whole world," says Susie Forbes, editor of Easy Living.
That the monthly Condé Nast glossy which Forbes edits is imbued with the same "headboard-to-toe approach‚" as Women's Wear Daily described Anthropologie's idiosyncratic mix of sleek comfort fashion as well as exotic yet homespun furniture and fixtures, is unsurprising. Around about the time Forbes developed her magazine, she discovered Anthropologie. "It was 10 years ago and friends of mine lived along the same street in New York," she continues, referring to the Anthropologie that stands near Topshop on West Broadway.
Forbes says she and her friend Lucinda Chambers, Vogue's influential fashion director, the acquired then au courant "shabby chic" domestic accessories from the store. "I would go to New York simply to shop at Anthropologie," she goes on, explaining that, ultimately, her adoration for the boutique is because of "everything feels like a one-off, even if it is not. But there is only one problem now that it has opened in London. Anthropologie is no longer my personal secret. I have to share it with other people. (Daily Telegraph U.K.)
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