Grown Brilliance opened on Friday its first flagship store in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood, as part of the jewelry brand’s U.S. retail expansion.
Grown Brilliance opens new flagship in NYC. – Grown Brilliance
Located at 121 Greene Street, the two-floor, 2,500-square-foot space houses the brand’s most exclusive collections, as well as an in-house café and bar. Designed by creative agency Zero Trillion and realized by Curruimbhoy & Associates, the store pairs warm ambient lighting with European oak floors, brass detailing, and lush green tones to create an atmosphere that’s meant to feel both refined and approachable.
At the center of the boutique’s design narrative is a custom chandelier born from Grown Brilliance’s collaboration with the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). The brand launched the “Facets of Light” contest, inviting students to envision a centerpiece that redefines the future of luxury, keeping in mind the brand ethos and beliefs.
“The Grown Brilliance flagship in Soho is more than a store, it’s a world I’ve dreamed of creating. After 18 months of work, every detail reflects my personal taste, from the textures and materials to the jewelry itself,” said founder Akshie Jhaveri.
“I want our customers to feel as though they’re stepping into my living room: warm, inviting, and inspiring rather than intimidating.”
The SoHo flagship adds to Grown Brilliance’s growing retail presence, which currently spans 14 locations across the U.S., including Los Angeles, Dallas, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.
Looking ahead, the brand plans to open four additional stores by the end of 2025, expanding into Boston, Atlanta, Dadeland, and Fort Worth.
In a crowded sports performancewear market, it’s important to have a strong message. So the Over+Above (O+A) brand is entering a new chapter with the tagline ‘Redefining Performance Wear for Body and Mind’.
Image: Over+Above
The online retailer’s ‘performance-first’ brand (‘created by athletes, for athletes’) is presenting a campaign to “renew its mission” by introducing ‘Freedom in Mind’ as a “bold creative campaign that signals a decisive evolution for the brand: performance isn’t only physical, it’s deeply human”.
This new chapter also marks the start of a series of ambassadorships, with ex-England rugby union captain Chris Robshaw joining in a creative partnership with endurance athlete and brand ambassador Ryan Libbey, “whose personal fitness journey and alignment with O+A’s values inspired the collaboration”.
The first of the campaign films was shot in the Peak District, following Libbey as he trained for an Iron Man challenge, “capturing not only the physical demands but also the emotional depth behind performance training”.
Through his journey, O+A “delves into the highs and lows of sport”, namely the vulnerability, setbacks, discipline, and breakthroughs, “experiences that the brand’s CEO, ex-England cricketer Matt Prior, and its ambassadors “understand intimately”.
At the heart of the campaign sits the ‘Director’s Cut’, “a more personal, direct, and fluid interpretation that weaves these layers into one cohesive narrative”.
At the core of the brand’s innovation lies its “market-leading” ProPrio product range that has been “anatomically engineered with patented kinesiology-inspired technology” that claims to have “already set a new benchmark in performance and compressionwear”.
The range includes full tights, half tights, calf sleeves, long-and short-sleeve tops and racquet sleeves, at oaperformance.com in sizes XS to XXL.
Womenswear brand Club L London has been expanding fast in recent periods and that can be seen from its newly-released 2024/25 results that saw profit before tax jumping 51%.
Club L London
For the 12 months to March this year, its turnover rose to £65.9 million from £44.4 million, a 48% leap.
Meanwhile gross profit rose as much as 62% to £37.8 million from £23.4 million, and the aforementioned profit before tax was up to £14 million from just under £3.1 million a year earlier.
Profit margins rose from 6.9% to 21.1% and net assets also grew significantly, from £9.1 million to £16.6 million, “reflecting the brand’s strengthened financial position and its capacity to continue investing in growth initiatives”.
Its net profit for the year rose to £10.38 million from £2.57 million.
The company said the performance was primarily driven by the brand’s strategic expansion into international markets and targeted investments in infrastructure and technology.
The US delivered 90% growth, Australia 83%, and the Middle East an “exceptional” 417% increase year-on-year. Europe also experienced saw triple-digit growth, “supported by an expanding international customer base and carefully executed localisation strategies across Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, and Saudi Arabia”.
The company launched localised webstores as part of this process “with end-to-end translation and cultural adaptations to ensure a seamless and locally relevant customer experience”.
Meanwhile, the opening of a dedicated US 3PL facility has improved delivery times — something that’s vital for European businesses aiming to crack the US market — as well as strengthening logistics capacity, and improving the overall customer experience.
Marketing chief Dan Sorensen said: “Following on from key infrastructural investments made previously, we’ve been able to scale profitably both domestically and internationally giving us an opportunity to serve our customers better across all borders.”
During the year in question and since it ended, the company has been extremely busy. Just before the latest financial year finished, it acquired Lavish Alice for an undisclosed seven-figure sum, “uniting two leading, legacy brands”.
Then in July, it launched a localised German website and in September launched on Middle Eastern e-commerce platform Ounass.
It looks like Frasers Group may be planning to relaunch Matchesfashion in 2026 although it’s not a dead cert and there’s been no confirmation from the company.
Matchesfashion
A report said the Matchesfashion.com website was back online with the words “relaunching 2026” under the name. But the situation is unclear as all that’s there as we published this story was an almost-empty page in the brand’s familiar green tone with no mention of a relaunch date.
A relaunch wouldn’t exactly come as a shock, although the speed with which Frasers had earlier closed the business did surprise some.
Frasers acquired the business out of administration for a reported £52 million just before Christmas 2023 but put it into administration in March 2024, citing the enormity of the task to turn it around.
Matches — which began as a physical retailer — had been one of the pioneers of luxury online retail and once had a valuation of around £800 million. But a succession of CEOs failed to turn it into a digital-first business that was able to make a profit.
Its struggles came at the same time as other pioneers such as Farfetch and Net-A-Porter encountered their own profitability problems.
But despite the problem with online luxury real, the big names in the sector remain valuable properties with a high profile. Coupang’s acquisition of Farfetch and LuxExperience’s purchase of Yoox Net-A-Porter highlighted how in-demand they are.
As for Matchesfashion, there had been rumours of a comeback for it and in May, The Times reported that Frasers was working on a “members-only Matches Fashion relaunch” and that it had seen an “internal pitch deck” suggesting the luxury fashion webstore could be turned into what it described as the “Soho House of retail”.