As young fashion retailer Forever 21 opens on Oxford Street, John Ryan visits Topshop’s flagship to see if new competition can stand up to the shopping destination’s home of fashion

Topshop, Oxford Street

Location 214 Oxford Street

Size 92,000 sq ft

Store design Changes regularly and done in-house

Future Topshop highlights Topshop Chicago (September) and Las Vegas

Topshop at Oxford Circus has long been on the map for London visitors, whether from the UK or overseas. And the reason for this is simple, it is not the cheapest fashion option along the street, but it has a reputation for staying ahead of the game.

This is reflected in the stock, but also in the shopfit and the look and feel of the interior. Fashion is fashion, but for it to sell in the sort of quantities seen here – 3 million transactions every year – you need an environment that makes shoppers feel part of the zeitgeist.

It is far from straightforward, yet talk to Arcadia visual director Tim Whitmore, and you could be deceived into thinking that it is. This is the man charged with taking stock and store and then making both better than the sum of the parts might lead you to expect. But where do you start in a fashion behemoth on this scale and how often are the changes rung?

This is a pretty good looking store to start with, but stand inside the entrance and you might lose a sense of this, as the displays and visual tricks take hold. Whitmore refers to “the twins”, and more or less wherever you look there are pairs of mannequins in highly styled poses. “I always say to my team that we are about selling outfits and so we don’t want to over-style things,” says Whitmore. Nonetheless, with the first pair of twins located in a glass box and weeping blue tears of hair, it’s hard not to think that a fair amount of styling has gone into manipulating the fashion impulses of store visitors.

All change please

Whitmore says that the windows that front all of this and many of the internal displays are changed every four weeks. It’s six in other branches, and that Arcadia chief executive Ian Grabiner is constantly asking: “What are you going to do next?”, according to Whitmore. He says this can be stressful but that it is fun and just walking the floor provides stimulation for new ideas.

Move deeper into the ground floor and things change. The make-up shop on the left is glamorous and features a graphic of a striking gap-toothed model. Around the perimeter above this there are white boxes with black edges, used as display modules in case, just in case, the eye tires of the panorama beneath this. “They were used in a window display originally,” says Whitmore, who explains that much of what is on view when it comes to the visual merchandising is either recycled or repurposed.

Not so with the twins, each of which sports a distinctive wig. “They were done by a Spanish guy who I met in the clubs a few years ago,” says Whitmore.

Also of particular note on the ground floor is the Freedom accessories department. Accessories always run the risk of looking like a jumble sale, but this does not happen here. There is also the Edited section. This is in a space accessed via a separate escalator that was, until recently, home to maternitywear, which has moved into the upper of the two basements. Edited is, in effect, a capsule Topshop, a sort of Topshop within a Topshop, with collections edited by guest curators.

Head down the escalator to the larger of the basements and you leave twin world and enter grid world. Grid, because the 103 mannequins on this floor are arranged in grids, semi-catwalk style, with each group demonstrating one of the trends Topshop is currently pushing, ranging from the mainstream Prime and Polished to the more edgy looks of Bavaria. Whatever you think of the collections, there is no denying the power of the arrangement.

Around the corner there is Boutique, a white-tiled department where new designers are exhibited. This floor is also home to Topshop’s denim department, which is due to receive a revamp late this summer and which Whitmore is keen to show off the plans for.

Down another level and you are in the lowest part of the shop. Yet more mannequins and a very substantial shoe shop, which is set to be remodelled in spring 2012. There is also a branch of Eat, which is also due a facelift.

Setting the standard

Overall, the point about this store is that which perhaps should be a mantra for any fashion outfit – stand still for long enough and the stock is likely to pass in front of you. This is about dynamic visual merchandising where things change rapidly, rather than setting up shop for the season.

It also does what the best flagships do – sets an aspirational target for the rest of the chain, rather than just being a bigger version of what can be seen elsewhere. And, interestingly, at a time when digital displays and large screens seem de rigueur in some stores, there is hardly a trace of this at Topshop Oxford Circus.

This remains the benchmark by which others measure their performance when it comes to creating visual interest. This may not be a new store, but it manages to realise a sense of novelty whenever you walk through the door. It will be interesting to see whether this week’s opening of Forever 21  changes this status quo, although unless it demonstrates considerable sleight of hand, this seems unlikely.

Top of the shops

Everything about Topshop’s Oxford Street flagship store is big.

The shop spills seamlessly over three levels; with the ground floor at 12,000 sq ft and two basements at 23,000 sq ft and 34,500 sq ft respectively. The store’s Topman section also covers 23,000 sq ft, bringing the total to 92,000 sq ft. The flagship dwarfs the forthcoming Las Vegas Topshop, due to open in March, which at 20,000 sq ft is barely the size of a single floor in this store. At £147m last year, sales impress and densities run at £1,607 per sq ft.

In addition to being open 80 hours a week and receiving five deliveries a day to keep the store stocked, the flagship profits significantly from its personal shopping service. Individual consultations by 12 on-trend and experienced staff mean average transactions of £360, and a £5m a year yield. Beyoncé dropped by to try out the service recently…