Palazzo Fendi has opened in Milan during the recent womenswear fashion week. The new Milanese luxury hub by the LVMH-owned Roman label, located at the intersection of Via Montenapoleone and Corso Matteotti, is home to a 910-square-metre store, an atelier area and three Langosteria restaurants.
Palazzo Fendi’s façade
Fendi’s new home in Milan extends over four floors inside a rationalist building designed by architect Emilio Lancia, built between 1933 and 1936. The interior design is the brainchild of Fendi’s architecture department, and blends details typical of 1930s Milanese homes with the label’s signature elements. For example, pre-existing marble details alongside Fendi’s special marble flooring, inspired by the floors of ancient Rome.
Adding further lustre to the décor, a selection of artworks hand-picked with local galleries and foundations, including the Officine Saffi Foundation, the Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation, and the Mazzoleni and Secci art galleries.
The ground floor is home to Fendi’s women’s accessories. Its central feature is a deconstructed column by artist Anton Alvarez, created expressly for Fendi. An artisanal sculpture by Roberto Sironi has pride of place at the building’s second ground-floor entrance.
Inside Palazzo Fendi
Within the retail area, the accessories section showcases fashion jewellery, sunglasses, belts, perfumes and textile accessories. Two asymmetric entwined ceramic pieces by artist Roger Cal, in Fendi’s signature yellow and bubble-gum pink, hang on the room’s corners.
At the heart of the ground floor, a hexagonal area with twin staircases adorned with two symmetrical artworks by Levy Van Veluw. The contemporary fresco that occupies most of the ceiling is by artist Edoardo Piermattei, who has decorated the entire stairwell leading to the upper floors.
The first floor, dedicated to menswear and childrenswear, is reminiscent of a private club. The fretwork door in silvered nickel opens onto the VIP area, inspired by the style of Villa Necchi Campiglio by architect Piero Portaluppi. The décor features a painting by Daniel Crews-Chubbs, entitled Where the Wild Things Are, and a special dressing room with Roman-inspired wallpaper designed by artist Luke Edward Hall for Rubelli.
The Fendi collections on display
The second floor includes two areas dedicated to Fendi’s couture and women’s ready-to-wear, connected to two round VIP rooms. One of these features the label’s high jewellery collections, while the other contains an abstract sculpture depicting a human figure by Belgian artist Florian Tomballe.
A Nick Cave sculpture leads into the third floor, home to Fendi’s fur and leather ateliers, where the label’s artisans create and customise their products. The ateliers also showcase some of Fendi’s iconic archival items. Through a special arched foyer inspired by the architecture of Rome’s Pantheon, visitors can finally enter the Fendi Apartment, featuring Rosso Rosa, a painting by Agostino Bonalumi, and the Tracce I triptych by Arnaldo Pomodoro.
Footasylum‘s busy store-opening strategy of 2025 has continued into the new year with the footwear/sportswear business now planing to open a “landmark” new store in the Trinity Leeds shopping centre in April.
Footaylum
The 12,000 sq ft store “builds on Footasylum’s long-standing presence in Leeds”, and follows the “strong performance” of its former store at The Core shopping centre and last year’s “successful” pop-up at Trinity Leeds, it said.
The new store will be located on the centre’s lower ground floor in the unit previously occupied by Superdry.
To celebrate the spring opening, Footasylum said will be “bringing its social media strategy from the screens to the streets” with a series of events in-store.
It will also be partnering with local businesses “to celebrate the incredible talent within the city and connect with consumers at a local level”, it added.
On the latest opening, Shannon Osman, head of Retail at Footasylum, added: “Leeds has always been a strong market for [us]. The response to our pop-up in the Trinity shopping centre last year and our previous store at The Core demonstrated clear demand for a bigger, permanent Footasylum presence in the city.
“This store represents an important step as we continue our rollout across the UK and beyond under Aurelius’ ownership. Investing in high-quality retail spaces remains central to our multi-brand, multi-channel strategy, and we look forward to further openings in the year ahead.”
Footasylum added that the Trinity Leeds opening forms part of its ongoing UK store rollout and follows a number of recent openings including Cornmill Centre, Darlington, Croft Retail and Leisure Park, Bromborough and Forster Square shopping centre, Bradford.
Separately, the company also noted that it continues to progress its international expansion programme having signed a distribution agreement with MAD agency across the DACH region of Germany, Austria and Switzerland in November.
In addition, a new strategic partnership with Apparel Group was signed in December, “setting in motion plans to open Footasylum stores across the Gulf Cooperation Council region”, including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman.
Landsec’s prime shopping destinations had a shining Golden Quarter in terms of both sales and footfall with health & beauty (+13%) and clothing (+5%) sales becoming “the strongest-performing categories” across its major retail destinations.
Bluewater
The key quarter, which includes Christmas trading, “maintained healthy consumer demand, exceeding last year’s impressive figures and pulling further ahead of market averages”, the commercial property giant said in a trading statement Monday (19 January).
With Liverpool One and Bluewater in Kent among its portfolio of key shopping/entertainment destinations, total Golden Quarter sales rose 4.9% year-on-year, “significantly outperforming the national retail benchmark”, which it notes fell by 0.2%. And during the three peak Christmas shopping weeks, sales were up 6.5% year-on-year, it added.
Footfall across Landsec’s major shopping centres and outlets also rose by 0.7% over the quarter, compared with the national benchmark of -0.3% across the wider market, “supported by strong seasonal momentum”.
Since FY22, its retail destinations have also seen cumulative sales growth of 20%, outperforming the UK national average by 17ppt, it also noted.
Performance-wise, health & beauty’s particularly strong showing was helped by four out of the six new Sephora stores opened in the UK over the past 12 months having been at Landsec destinations, it added.
And let’s not forget the rising importance of leisure and hospitality, with both also playing key roles in consumer engagement, seeing a 6.2% growth in sales.
“This category also played a key role in increasing dwell times across Landsec’s centres, reinforcing the importance of [our] experience-led strategy in supporting retail spend and repeat visits”, it noted.
Bruce Findlay, managing director of Retail at Landsec, added: “Consumers continue to seek out destinations which combine a wide selection of the best brands with best in class experiences. This was certainly true during the Golden Quarter with sales and footfall for prime retail once again ahead of the wider market.
“With a reach of one in four UK consumers, we offer brands more footfall than any other retail platform. By combining this reach with the powerful data insights available to us, we’re creating a self-reinforcing growth engine that delivers higher sales and attracts the world’s best brands.”
He added: “Alongside a strong leisure and hospitality offer, we provide compelling, experience-led retail environments, positioning us well for continued success as we look ahead to 2026.”
UK retail giant Frasers Group has announced the integration of Sports Direct Membership into its ‘Frasers Plus’ loyalty scheme “to create one unified, rewards platform” from February.
Frasers Group
Aiming to widen its customer loyalty offer, Frasers Plus is the group’s credit payment account “that rewards customers every time they shop across the Frasers Group portfolio and partner retailers”.
With this integration, users “will gain access to even greater rewards with more exclusive benefits and personalised offers” the group said.
Frasers said the move marks a new chapter in its digital elevation as it unifies Sports Direct Membership’s loyalty and rewards offerings under Frasers Plus.
The integration “simplifies the customer shopping experience” across the group’s portfolio (Sports Direct, Flannels, and Frasers) and 16 partner retailers (including LookFantastic, Myprotein, Marks Electrical), “providing a single destination for rewards, personalised offers, and flexible payment options” in the Frasers Plus app.
David Twigg, MD of Frasers Group Financial Services, said: “This is an exciting step forward for Frasers Plus. By integrating Frasers Group’s existing loyalty offerings under Frasers Plus, we’re building on important learnings from the past year about how our customers like to shop and streamlining the customer experience to deliver a more powerful, personalised, and cohesive rewards proposition across the full Frasers Group portfolio and partner retailers.”