Marks & Spencer is unveiling its new-look flagship store on Oxford Street with the top two floors reopening after a major development.
The retail giant’s store, located in the iconic Pantheon building, now spans four floors and almost 100,000 square feet.
The new floors are home to the menswear, kidswear, lingerie and home collections, with Pantheon’s layout to act as the blueprint for M&S’s future stores.
It also includes a new bespoke suiting offer, where customers can develop a made-to-order suit in-store, which would be ready in three weeks.
Meanwhile, the home section features M&S’s Tom Kerridge range, such as three stackable cast iron pans and chef’s sauté pans.
M&S hopes the revamp will make it one of the most popular shopping destinations in London – on a street which 500,000 people walk down every day.
Chief executive Stuart Machin said: “In 2019, we built the blueprint to modernise our food business, with a new food format designed to capture the soul of a fresh market.
“We started at Clapham St John’s Road and have renewed 160 of our food stores since then, including here at Pantheon. Now we’re taking that same approach into fashion, home and beauty.
“Pantheon on Oxford Street, where we’ve had a store since 1938, is our first full-line flagship and our research and development store for fashion, home and beauty. It’s where we’re testing how we make shopping our ranges easier, more curated and more inspiring, from clearer product moments to how the store looks and feels overall.
“We’ve still got a lot to do modernising our estate, with 25 years of catching up to do. But Pantheon is a big step forward.”
Parts of the store have remained open during the redevelopment, but the remaining two upper floors were closed.
The Oxford Street shop’s lower ground foodhall opened last August, followed by its womenswear and beauty sections in January.
The foodhall includes 500 new M&S products, such as the viral chocolate and pistachio dip and a whipped feta dip.
It comes after it was announced last week that M&S will debut at the London Fashion Week runway this year, as its ongoing style revival gathers steam.
M&S will showcase a collection of “see now, buy now” womenswear and menswear at the event in September, and the range will be available for shoppers to buy online and in flagship shops across the UK.
Perceptions of the brand’s style and quality have improved among customers, and increased its share of the overall market for womenswear.
It has seen a 30 per cent rise in female customers in the past year, with jewellery sales at Pantheon rising by 150 per cent.
The new Oxford Street store is one of six that M&S is renewing in London this financial year, alongside four brand new stores. Across the UK, two new full-line stores, 18 new food stores, four extensions and a number of renewals are planned.
More than 100 guests, including M&S ambassadors, joined Mr Machin and members of the M&S leadership team for a preview of the store on Sunday evening.
