As SS25 gets under way, John Lewis is upping its fashion credentials with the addition of 49 new women’s and menswear labels, including SS Daley, the award-winning brand that recently saw Harry Styles joining as an investor.
SS Daley for John Lewis
It means the department store chain will now be selling more than 350 labels alongside its own-brand fashion offer.
Selected stores and the webstore will carry over 40 women’s and men’s pieces from SS Daley, including knits and dresses with Daley’s signature design elements.
The newcomers also include Dragon Diffusion, Second Female, NN07, Norse Projects, Fast Retailing’s Theory, Summery Copenhagen and Fabienne Chapot.
It’s believed that the SS Daley deal came about through John Lewis’s long-term relationship with the British Fashion Council, and follows its inclusion of AWAKE Mode last year.
In menswear, the retailer is also expanding its selection of the existing labels it sells, including more exclusives from Barbour, Gant, Ralph Lauren and The Kooples.
Fashion director Rachel Morgans said the company still offers the quality and value expected with its fashion but it’s also introducing “sharper designs from exciting new designers, which will make our customers sit up and take notice”.
She added that menswear in particular is responding to customers getting “bolder with their choices” and that the chain wants to sell labels that make people stop and ask ‘where did you get that?’
The retailer continues to hunt down “cool, trending brands” and has seen a very good response to labels like AWAKE Mode, Hayley Menzies and The Kooples.
Onofri, former president of outerwear brand Napapijri, with previous executive roles at Bulgari and Bally, will take her new role starting on February 26.
Former Miu Miu CEO Benedetta Petruzzo left the label in September to join Christian Dior Couture.
Miu Miu, the second largest brand in the Prada Group, recorded strong growth in 2024, with sales almost doubling year-on-year in January-September.
The British Fashion Council (BFC) is to open The London Fashion Week Shop on Regent Street from 22-24 February “to provide crucial commercial support for designers” as part of its wider set of events linked to London Fashion Week.
Regent Street
Curated by fashion buying big names Ida Petersson and Lewis Bloyce, the “archive and discovery space” will see consumers shopping an exclusive archive collection from some of LFW’s equally big names. They include 16Arlington, Ahluwalia, Bianca Saunders, Completedworks, Conner Ives, Helen Kirkum, Johanna Parv and Saul Nash.
They can also sign up to attend a number of exclusive events such as panel discussions, workshops and piercings by Aurum London.
It’s part of the City Wide Celebration (CWC), the programme of events and promotions open to the public during and after LFW, which take place across the capital’s premier shopping destinations — Regent Street, Oxford Street, Soho and Covent Garden.
In recent seasons, that has seen the BFC ‘opening up’ fashion week and encouraging more participation by the end user of fashion firms’ products — the consumer.
The BFC said it’s “committed to opening up LFW to a new audience, providing wider support to the creative community”.
Burberry is continuing its campaign theme ‘It’s always Burberry weather’ that focuses on its Britishness and its outerwear strength, and the latest edition for summer 2025 has an extra romantic comedy theme with the additional title ‘London in Love’.
And there’s no shortage of celebrity names continuing to sign up to appear in its campaigns with Hollywood big-hitter Kate Winslet the star this time, along with Richard E Grant and a slew of other famous faces.
The use of movie stars makes sense given that for the season, Burberry is releasing a series of seven films inspired by late 1990s, early 2000s British rom coms, which focus on the everyday romances of ordinary Londoners.
“A Burberry love story comes to life through the cinematic lens of this campaign. It’s about humour, optimism and, of course, the unpredictability of our great British weather,” the brand’s creative chief Daniel Lee (who also creatively directed the campaign) said.
“With endearingly familiar plot lines and playful dialogue, an A-list cast stars in this urban fairytale of love, life and the rain,” Burberry explained.
Oscar-winner Winslet is joined by Grant alongside Aimee Lou Wood, Chen Kun, Jodie Turner-Smith, Micheal Ward, Nicholas Hoult, and Son Sukku, while models David Gandy, Liu Wen and Naomi Campbell also appear – “with a special guest appearance (and strictly non-speaking role) by a chivalrous Burberry Knight in shining armour”.
As we’ve seen from other recent campaigns, this one focuses heavily on Burberry’s star pieces and celebrates the “long-standing history of the trench coat and the reinvention of this iconic style for summer”.
The films “meld romantic tropes with the ever-inclement British weather. They offer a rain-soaked segue into the brand’s innovative approach to all-weather expertise, in which heritage and seasonal trench coats feature alongside expressive new silhouettes”.
To go with the cinematic campaign, Burberry is launching an “all-encompassing” celebration including window displays and in-store activations to mark it out as what CEO Josh Schulman said is the “ultimate trench and rainwear destination”.
Those window and store activations are curated to “reflect the joyful essence of summertime in London. Delicate clusters of wisteria and pastel blossoms adorn the stores, mirroring the way they bloom on mews and cascade over archways throughout the city. Floral displays are complemented by lime-washed cladding across the space, drawing from London’s historic architecture while reflecting the shades and textures seen across the collection”.