British jeweller Pragnell has opened an expanded showroom in its home town Stratford-upon-Avon, with the new space “dedicated to showcasing watches from leading Swiss… brands”.

It comes with an impressive address – The Embassy at Number One Wood Street – and now spans around 2,000 sq ft having expanded into adjacent properties.

The new space allows it to “offer an unparalleled selection from some of the world’s finest luxury Swiss watch brands” including Cartier, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Breitling, IWC Schaffhausen, Bulgari, Tudor, and Panerai. 

The showroom also features newly developed spaces dedicated to Rolex and Patek Philippe, alongside prestigious independent high-horology brands, including Greubel Forsey, Ludovic Ballouard, and Laurent Ferrier. It also features a curated collection of Fope jewellery.

The reconfiguration of the 16th century cottages “provides a sophisticated retail space that showcases an exceptional selection of Pragnell jewellery, designed in-house and handcrafted in Great Britain, alongside a state-of-the-art workshop with viewing windows into the showroom”.

The “exquisite” interior design creates a high-quality boutique environment within which to browse while maintaining a relaxed and friendly atmosphere in the heart of Stratford-upon-Avon, the brand noted.

The opening also “significantly enhances and broadens the watch retail offering in the West Midlands region”, it said noting “many of the partner brands have very limited distribution. The
Embassy has established a national multi-brand hub in the Midlands… making it accessible to a wide range of new clients”.

But the story doesn’t end there. A second phase to The Embassy “will further enhance the unique brand partner offering, with exciting plans to be announced later in the year”, it added.

With a reported 150,000 downloads of its first-ever mobile app, launched just six months ago, digital retailer SportsShoes.com is hailing the introduction as a major success.
 

The app forms part of the £90 million-turnover retailer’s “ongoing strategic expansion plans to enhance its customers’ online retail experience”.

It said the app also “acts as a platform to not only further connect, engage, and serve its customers, but also support the wider athlete community”.

In the app, customers can access personalised product and content suggestions unique to them and based on previous activity and preferences with a standard shopping feed as a secondary option. Users also have the opportunity to access exclusive competitions offering a range of prizes. 

The platform also integrates customer membership options throughout the shopping journey, including the ability for users sync their England Athletics profile with their SportsShoes.com account.

Managing director, Brett Bannister, said: “It’s amazing to see the positive response from the running and fitness community. The rapid uptake is a solid reflection of our commitment to provide the best online purchasing experience, helpful content and unmissable competitions across multiple platforms.

“This early success also opens more doors to innovate and leverage tech to further connect, engage and serve the running community and power our growth plans.”

The launch of the app forms part of a £4.6 million investment it has made between 2021 and 2024 in its technologies, people, processes and facilities. This ran alongside a replatforming of the retailer’s UK and international website “supporting improved levels of personalisation across both product discovery and advice”.
 
The improved capabilities of the international websites also contributed to a 22% increase in international sales for the first half of the company’s latest financial year, it added.

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake will be the star attraction and guest of honor at the upcoming June edition of Pitti, menswear’s most prestigious international salon.

 
The renowned Japanese label will stage an Italian-inspired runway show in Florence at Pitti from Tuesday, June 17, to Friday, June 20.
 
“The presence of Homme Plissé Issey Miyake at the upcoming Pitti Uomo in June fills us with pride and excitement,” said Raffaello Napoleone, CEO of Pitti Immagine.

Being selected as Pitti’s guest of honor is one of the greatest accolades in men’s fashion. Previous guests include influential designers such as Giorgio Armani, Vivienne Westwood, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Haider Ackermann, Dolce & Gabbana, Dries Van Noten, Yohji Yamamoto, and Valentino.

“We are pleased to announce that Homme Plissé Issey Miyake is soon to embark on a new creative adventure. Marking the first occasion of this adventure is our participation in Pitti Immagine Uomo in June 2025,” the house said in a statement on Wednesday.

“We feel grateful for this opportunity to be featured at one of the most celebrated menswear events in the world. On this occasion, we will present our spring/summer 2026 collection to a local and international audience in Florence, created based on our research and field studies carried out during our travels across Italy,” the house added.

One of Japan’s greatest designers, Issey Miyake, founded his eponymous house in 1970. He built an iconic body of work defined by technologically driven fabrics, artistic silhouettes, unique collaborations, and a long-term fascination with pleated textiles—hence the collection’s name.

The Homme Plissé Issey Miyake show will take place on Wednesday, June 18, though the exact location has not been revealed. Guest designers generally select historic sites in and around Florence, the capital of the Renaissance, which offers no shortage of unique and striking venues. Jonathan Anderson staged his show in the lavish Villa La Pietra, the former home of writer and aesthete Harold Acton, while Hugo Boss once presented a collection in a Renaissance villa designed by Michelangelo.

“We have long hoped to associate the name of this great Japanese brand with our event, and today we can finally share a long-awaited announcement: Homme Plissé Issey Miyake will be the guest of honor at Pitti Uomo 108. This is our way of recognizing and celebrating the quality, creativity, and originality of the brand, its success on a global scale—and, at the same time, highlighting its current creative direction, which has successfully reinterpreted the quiet, elegant magic of its founder: one of the designers, one of the artists, who shaped the history of fashion in the twentieth century,” added Napoleone.

The house of Miyake further announced that its visit to Pitti would mark the beginning of a new era in which “the brand will travel around the world to present its clothing in places and at events where it has never been before, meeting local communities and connecting with a global creative scene.”

It did not disclose when or where these events—for men and women—would take place, noting that they may be staged outside of the traditional runway calendar.

However, the house emphasized that both its newly created IM Men collections will continue to be presented twice a year during the official menswear runway season in Paris in January and June.

Meanwhile, its signature Issey Miyake womenswear collection—now under Satoshi Kondo’s design direction—will continue to be shown during the Paris women’s ready-to-wear season in March and October.

Kondo’s latest collection in March was a visually striking display held at the Carrousel du Louvre. It opened with white cotton T-shirt dresses seemingly invaded by red ribbed knits or pleated cocktail dresses twisted into exotic swirls—suggesting they had lives of their own. Later, Kondo paired mannish blazers with dramatically inverted shirts, their sleeves cascading before the waist. The show received the largest applause of the season in Paris.

Along with these four signature shows in Paris, the brand also plans to “travel and acquire knowledge and experiences. We believe that our work will continue to evolve by establishing strong footholds that inspire our designs. By engaging in our craft in different cultural contexts, we aim to develop a wider range of clothing that is more diverse, yet still universal.”

The house concluded, “We also look forward to exploring new formats to communicate who we are as a brand. ”