Sign up to receive the Vogue Business newsletter for the latest luxury news and insights, plus exclusive membership discounts.
Airbnbs and architecture firms were some of the hottest locations in Paris this season, as many London-based designers set up their own showrooms. Between agency showroom fees reaching new highs, ever-changing consumer behaviours and the shutdown of the British Fashion Council’s (BFC) London showrooms in January 2023, younger brands have been busy coming up with ways to cut costs while still reaching buyers. Necessity is the mother of invention after all.
The London showrooms will be back in September 2024 “with a renewed focus on supporting Newgen and BFC Foundation designers through an exporting incubator programme”, according to BFC CEO Caroline Rush. In the meantime, here’s some tips on how to set up your own showroom from those who’ve already done it.
Chet Lo
In the past, we’d show with agency showrooms and they are really great because you’re able to reach buyers that you may have not been exposed to by yourself. Unfortunately, for the past two seasons, we haven’t had quite the same budget that we used to. But there’s always ways to cut costs, so last season we got together with a group of young designers from London — we all pitched in and rented an Airbnb in Paris and turned it into our showroom. This season, I reached out to Dimitra [Petsa, founder of Di Petsa] and she was up for sharing a space with me as well. It’s much cheaper, and we’re also able to bounce off of each other’s repertoires and buyers. You don’t get as much foot traffic as we had with agency showrooms, but there’s pros and cons to everything. We literally cut our costs by three-quarters compared to the seasons before. We were also able to do everything in four days, we packed them with appointments and it’s been quite successful.
The economy is really bad right now. There are so many different variables that are making things incredibly difficult for young designers. We are very lucky to still have our main supporting retailers that are keeping us stable; so for us, it’s important to be in Paris. It’s about sustaining our relationships with our buyers — having a space for them to come to and actually feel the clothes. Otherwise we would have just done virtual appointments.
We started off direct-to-consumer (DTC) — that’s how we grew the business. Then we moved to wholesale and that transition was quite stressful. You get a larger buy at the start and it’s exciting, but that money comes in and immediately goes out to factories. Eventually, you realise that even if you just make 20 grand from DTC sales, that 20 grand is yours. Of course, certain wholesalers are really important to have in your repertoire because it legitimises the brand. Two seasons ago, we were very wholesale dependent. But now we are trying to find a balance — maybe a couple of big stores and then the majority DTC. We want to be able to build our relationships with the actual customers themselves and understand what they really want.
Di Petsa
For us, a multi-brand showroom proved to be a little distracting. You have a lot of brands. You have a lot of people talking at the same time. It’s not as intimate. And I feel that especially with my collections, where you have a lot of storytelling and details, I need the space to have an actual conversation with my buyers. I can show them the whole collection, piece by piece — we have our own fitting model. We have about 18 stockists, so for me right now it’s not so much about growing that number but about fostering the relationships with the people that I have already. I want to get their feedback and tell them my story.
We used to be in the [BFC’s] London showrooms, which was an amazing space and experience but this season, they didn’t have enough funding to do it again. So my brand manager, Sophie, and I had to find another way, and that’s how we started off renting spaces and doing it ourselves. This is the first time I’m sharing a showroom. We wanted to get a bigger space that is still central so sharing with Chet — who I met through [BFC emerging talent programme] Newgen — made sense. We always said we have similar personalities.
It worked out really well because I also use the space to bring in DTC customers and stylists. That’s the funny thing about coming to Paris; we get a lot of stylists who want stuff from the new collection for fashion week events. We find ourselves in a constant pull between samples for VIPs, and showing: a celebrity may have borrowed a piece that I need to show a buyer the next day. It’s been a learning curve and for next season, I would like to have two samples of each piece. But it’s a big undertaking and, of course, it costs.
I feel like post-Covid people are craving real, human interactions. People want to know what they are buying — it’s about appreciating the pieces. I really do think the future is to have more of these independent showrooms.
Steve O Smith
This season, I was lucky to be working with a sales agent, who basically just shared her contact list. I had been following up with buyers since November and then decided, we might as well go to Paris. My partner actually had this Airbnb on his wish list for about five years. It’s basically this really crazy dungeon. And so I got in touch with them. I let them know that we were going to have appointments, because I didn’t want to book it through Airbnb, in case that broke any rules. They were really helpful and let us stay with the original rates.
For three days we had this incredible space, which was great for me because the drawings are so central to my work that it was great to find a way of having them displayed properly. I got to do my mannequins; we were able to set it all out in the way that I wanted it, which I think helps so much when people come into the space, to sort of have it be its own thing. Whereas I find with [multi-brand] showrooms, there’s so many designers that it’s a nightmare getting access to the steamer. It also meant we could go early, set up and just do it all in three days, which saved a lot of money.
Pauline Dujancourt
I used to work as a knitwear designer and after Covid, I did my MA at Central Saint Martins. When I graduated, I realised I had to show my work in Paris where all the buyers and the press go. But I couldn’t afford to do a show or presentation or even a [multi-brand] showroom. I am originally from here, so I thought perhaps there’s a way to do it myself for the time being. So I started looking for someone who could lend me a space.
This is my father’s architecture agency. They very much need it, but he saw that I was desperate. We had to move everything, all the computers, the seats, the paperwork, to turn it into a showroom. We bought rails, mirrors, mannequins and we installed all sorts of other little bits like curtains and lights.
Before the first showroom in October 2022, I was terrified. I didn’t expect anyone to come because nobody knew me. I also thought those that did come wouldn’t take me seriously because it’s so unprofessional to show in your dad’s office. But I think in the end people respected me for it. People like hearing the story behind it all. They sit down and take time to chat with me and I can take them through every piece, which might not have been the case if I was in a multi-brand showroom. So by the end of the first showroom, I thought to myself, “why would I spend 5K next season when I barely have any money?” Now, twice a year, my sister and I wake up extremely early one morning, bring the whole collection over and we put everything together. And on those showroom days, my father puts his staff in remote work. And then a few days later, we return the space and try to hide every little alteration we’ve made. We store the bigger parts, like the rails, in a storage room downstairs.
This showroom is also how some of the people who work for the LVMH Prize discovered me. The nomination meant I had to adjust my schedule [this season]. It may have turned some people off, but hopefully it will work in my favour.
In the future, I would like to do a presentation to show the collection, with stronger storytelling and maybe to have a little more marketing around the brand as well. That would be really cool. I’m actually OK to keep doing this showroom for now, because I am building stronger relationships with my buyers. I think I will be reinvesting the money that I make in the brand instead of going to a large showroom.
Jake Burt of Stefan Cooke
For our first two seasons we were lucky enough to be with Fashion East. We had rails at the London showrooms, which were managed by the BFC and specifically by Anna Orsini, who really took us under her wing. You come straight out of [Central] Saint Martins, you start a brand, and then suddenly you’re on the Eurostar to Paris not really knowing how to do any of this. But that’s what the showrooms were for: any questions we had, someone would answer — whether it was Anna or someone else from the BFC or other designers. Charles Jeffrey, who was still doing the London showrooms at that point, gave us a lot of advice. Kiko Kostadinov too, who was in the year above us in the MA. I remember texting him on the Eurostar to Paris asking, “Kiko, how do we make a line sheet?” But in 2023 their funding got cut and we needed to pay a fee to take part in agency showrooms, which we couldn’t afford to do.
So we joined Seiya Nakamura. It was quite small, but still a multi-brand showroom. They are based in Tokyo, so a challenge was the distance, but we would still see them in Paris. But Seiya Nakamura weren’t holding a multi-brand showroom for this season, so we ended up doing our own showroom.
Our business manager, Sam, found it listed on one of these websites that list retail spaces for rent. My brother has a white transit van and we ended up driving from London to Paris together with our entire kit for the showroom. We queued for 12 hours at customs but it was nice because we got to hang out.
We stayed in Paris for two nights and then Sam took over and managed it. We find it’s good for the designers to be there to greet buyers and have a little chat. But I feel it can be harder for them to give honest feedback if the designers are there so Stef [the brand’s co-founder, Stefan Cooke] and I would go off and do something else, and Sam would sit down with the buyers. He records it all and then we have a meeting after Paris to go through what we might change for next season.
It ended up working really well. It inadvertently became a sort of branding exercise, too. Some of my friends who don’t work in fashion saw my [Instagram] Stories with the “Stefan Cooke window” and thought we had opened a shop in Paris. Of course, if they understood fashion, they just would never think that was possible.
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
