WALKING THE SHOP floor with Deirdre Devaney, fashion and beauty director of Arnotts, she’ll pounce on convincing examples of good winter buys as she sweeps through one fashion brand after another. To illustrate a broad price reach, she whips out a padded black nylon coat from Marc Cain, then a Burberry-style trench from Ralph Lauren and a classy camel number from Aquascutum – with ascending price tags. “We’ve done a lot of weeding and editing, adding missing layers,” she explains. “There are fewer brands and less clutter.” The “missing layers” to which she refers are the younger brands such as Hobbs NW3, Boutique by Jaeger and Anglomania, between the “non-threatening” Hobbs, LK Bennett and Gerald Darel, and the more up-scale labels.
“Our customer is not the It-bag person. We are selling coats up to €1,500 – and we never dreamt we would get €1,000 for a coat. Our coat business was 70 per cent of our business, now it’s 40 per cent because we have introduced other areas. The overriding message this season is that people want quality, so we don’t see high-street, disposable fashion as a threat because people are prepared to spend on a quality product. Our bestsellers this season are camel coats – by Peter O’Brien, Aquascutum, Max Co and Marella,” she says.
Devaney, who is charged with introducing more exciting, younger brands to Arnotts, is clear about her goals, and she has a lot of experience. From Fermoy in Co Cork, she worked in Harrods for 10 years, selling everything from €10,000 Fabergé eggs to launching the DKNY boutique in the store. “There were many firsts in fashion then,” she recalls. “To be a successful buyer, you have to have a certain level of taste, an ability to do your sums, an awareness of what the customer wants, and the rest is legwork.”
Back in Ireland, she spent a further 10 years as a buyer in Brown Thomas, upping its fashion credentials. “I have never set limits as to how far I can go, or how far we can go here making better. We want to become a fashion destination. Our buying mentality has changed. We’re going out with the attitude that we are the biggest department store in Ireland, not a boutique.” She has just spent a week in New York and is regularly in London, keeping an eye on up and coming labels. She thinks the store’s space and footfall are its two best assets.
Different Irish regions have different tastes. “You can’t give black away in Cork. It is a really different look there – everybody loves colour and black is for funerals. In Galway, they love dressing up and you really see it at the taxi ranks during the Galway races. There’s a great sense of style in Limerick and some great boutiques outside the city. That’s why UK multiples get it wrong. Each of our regions has to be treated differently, and that’s what gives us the edge.”
Fighting words, but as can be seen from the fashion feature on the preceding pages, there are many ways of interpreting what’s on Arnotts’ fashion floor today.
“I want to keep pushing Arnotts as a fashion destination and I will be relentless in my targeting,” she says. “It’s a totally different Arnotts to even a year ago in terms of brand mix. Now it’s all about the rate and pace of change.”
