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Polo Ralph Lauren Steps Out on Regent Street

Lifestyle retailing is one of the hallmarks of London’s grandest shopping street, but nothing is forever

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Polo Ralph Lauren has arrived on Regent Street – it opened relatively quietly in mid-September with the usual polite and shiny sales associates waiting to greet you and make you feel less than perfect. It’s been a while coming, the hoardings have been up for an age, but on first inspection, it’s all that you’d expect from one of lords of lifestyle retailing.

Practically, this means polo shirts that can be personalized using nifty digital screens, a sophisticated cream drawing room on the second floor for the women’s collections and multiple images of dogs on the walls of the kids’ room. All this, and the usual upturned canoe suspended from the ceiling on one of the two men’s floors, is exactly what you’d expect and it almost comes with a guarantee of preppy authenticity.

This is a good looking store and although it’s not as big as its Fifth Avenue sister, it does the same trick as far as fulfilling brand expectations. And with neighbors such as J.Crew, Burberry and Tommy Hilfiger, it fits in well as part of a local retail landscape that has a distinctly North American accent.

Yet, a word of caution. Just around the corner from this swish new store is one that was lauded for years and which formerly had queues waiting outside it to get in. The emporium in question is, of course, Abercrombie & Fitch, and today the muscled and shapely sales associates (depending on gender) who used to stand guard at its entrance are signally absent most of the time, as are shoppers within.

As another exercise in marketing a lifestyle, this one looks as if it may have runs its course and so much was presumably spent on the fitout that when the tide turned, it has proved difficult to adapt to suit the mood.

All dogs have their day and doubtless almost every tenant on Regent Street will, in due course, meet its maker. Yet Regent Street remains and its ability to attract the high-gloss and must-visit retailers is undimmed. Some things, at least, are relatively constant.

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John Ryan is a journalist covering the retail sector, a role he has fulfilled for more than a decade. As well as being the European Editor of VMSD magazine, he writes for a broad range of publications in the U.K., the U.S. and Germany with a focus on in-store marketing, display and layout, as well as the business of store architecture and design. In a previous life, he was a buyer for C&A, based in London and then Düsseldorf, Germany. He lives and works in London.

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