How Marks & Spencer became cool

The brand known for frumpy blouses and comfortable shoes has reversed its reputation

Two fashion models, pose for a Marks & Spencer fashion campaign in 1970. Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images

To conjure up an image of the sorts of clothing Marks & Spencer sold five years ago is to ruminate on frumpy blouses, pants for the wearer’s eyes only and shoes that give appropriate arch support. What it offered in comfort, it sacrificed in style. It didn’t necessarily have a bad reputation – roughly one in three women is wearing an M&S bra at any given time – though it certainly wasn’t a sexy one. Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, routinely voted one of the sexiest women alive, had a long-standing collaboration with the brand. But even association with the Victoria’s Secret Angel couldn’t make M&S cool.

And so, when the company dropped out of the FTSE 100 for the first time since the London share’s index inception back in 1984 six years ago, the death knell seemed to toll. The company’s demotion to the FTSE 250 came at a time when it was closing some 120 stores and its share price sat at an almost 20-year low. The data distilled collective feeling into a brutal and unforgiving truth: the business was failing.

But it appears M&S has reversed its fortunes. What might have been its swansong was, it seems, merely the low point in its hero’s journey. Because while it took M&S four years to return to the FTSE 100, the company’s group revenue stood at £13bn in March this year, up 345 per cent from 2020. “Of all the turnarounds I have been part of,” wrote M&S’s chairman, Archie Norman in the company’s annual report this year, “this has been the slowest and most intractable… But we are now at last seeing the shaping of M&S take hold.”

This is in part thanks to hiring Maddy Evans, the former fashion director of Topshop, in 2019 as head of buying and then promoting her to director of womenswear in 2022. After the collapse of Philip Green’s Arcadia Group, the business went into administration in 2022, and there was a distinct Topshop-shaped hole for both the customer and the high street. Evans was able to leverage her knowledge of the Topshop customer base, which is notably younger than M&S’s, to lure them to M&S. “We’ve had to get closer to the market trends and be selective about what we do and don’t pursue in terms of style,” Evans has said. Tapping into Gen Z’s buying habits has helped transform the company’s business strategy – its trend forecasting is far more astute, and its ability to turn these predictions into tangible pieces is far quicker.

In its report, Generations Now and Next, M&S noted the prevalence of what it termed “flat-age thinking” – a trait characteristic of living in the digital age. Because most people are online, people are exposed to the same trends at the same time, which leads to a wider cross-section of the population buying the same pieces. Have you noticed the uptick of women wearing suede recently, or ballet flats? The brand has been able to capitalise on this shift in buying behaviour by tempting younger customers in through on-trend items (their leopard-print jeans had a 12,000-strong waitlist) without alienating its core base. As brand loyalty has dropped off generally in the retail landscape, M&S has been able to leverage its reputation as a heritage brand to entice customers who want to look good without having to compromise on quality.

Similarly, its brand partnerships have been nothing short of genius. In 2024, it launched a collaboration with Bella Freud that made high-end pieces feel accessible. Freud, known for her colourful and witty statement jumpers, was able to lean on M&S’s reputation as a leader in high-street cashmere. Meanwhile, M&S could utilise Freud’s zeitgeisty appeal (her clothing has been worn by people such as Kate Moss and Alexa Chung) to boost its balance sheet. Predictably, the collaboration sold out in less than 24 hours. Likewise, its partnership with Sienna Miller has proven incredibly successful. Employing their flat-age concept, Miller appeals both to those who grew up at a similar time to the actress and those who didn’t but have a wistful nostalgia for Nineties fashion.

There’s been numerous false dawns and business re-strategies since the company was founded 141 years ago. It’s oscillated wildly (and presumably unwillingly) between being a hallmark of the high street and struggling for relevancy. But over the last five years, M&S has – remarkably – found a way of appealing to customers who want modernity without having to sacrifice quality, style or an exorbitant amount of money. It has managed to shake off its reputation as reliably sensible and become genuinely cool. There’s a quiet confidence in the way the brand sells itself now, having successfully hybridised its heritage with today’s retail landscape. It’s no longer the in-reserve option – it’s first choice. Long may it continue.