Well it had to happen sooner or later, but I’m really surprised to see Hollister arriving so quickly in Belfast. I’d assumed being across the water from the mainland that it would take longer, but lo and behold, a Hollister hoarding has been erected on the lower level of Victoria Square in Belfast.

The store will apparently be 8200 sq foot, but no word on when it will be opening yet.

I’m a bit sad to be honest, it’s like when McDonald’s first appeared in Scotland (in Dundee, my home town), it took the specialness away from it. However my sister (fashion assistant at Tatler) has kindly agreed to start looking into new and upcoming brands that I can go checking out. Cheers sis! And it will help avoid the whole £20 shipping fee their website charges for shipping (from the US as there’s no from the UK shipping option).

Abercrombie and Fitch today announced that they are going to be closing all of their Ruehl stores by the end of the year.

Ruehl was an attempt by the company to target an older, post-college customer than their younger Abercrombie or Hollister brands. This meant extremely dark, but funky stores, selling extremely similar lines to Abercrombie and Hollister but with a hefty price premium attached. For example a t-shirt marked at perhaps $25 in Hollister would retail for $40 in Ruehl.

Ruehl was always pretty empty when I vistied, but I liked it because it remained the one place I could get that kind of clothing that not many people at home would have. Now Abercrombie and Hollister are across here, I guess I’m just going to have to put up with wearing the same stuff everyone else is wearing.

You can read the investor release here

Yeah, a massive flagship Hollister is due to open its doors in New York on July 16th this year. Situated on Broadway and Houston, it’s being described by the company as the Epic Hollister Store.

Epic it probably will be, it sucks I’ve no plans to go to NYC anytime soon though! You can check out a website about the new store at hcoridethewave.com

I’ve been aware of Simon Miller Jeans for a while now, ever since I tried to see how my site was doing in Google rankings (not very well unfortunately). Anyways, they are a premium line of very nice jeans from California.

I saw them a couple of weeks ago while perusing the mens’ section in Selfridges. They are quite literally, jeans with my name on them. Unfortunately the price tag is way out of my league – this pair was £260! Now I like my jeans, and I don’t mind paying £100 for a pair of Nudies, but this was a bit too steep for me, even given the name connection (and Miller’s even spelt correctly!). Maybe one day I’ll get to own a pair! Like erm when my salary goes up by like 300% or something.

I’m proud of my little sis. She’s been working as an intern at Tatler, and before returning there as a Fashion Assistant in May, she’s been interning at Womens’ Wear Daily for London Fashion Week.

She had her first article with a byline published online this week, you can read it here. Way to go sis!

Hollister – where I get a lot of my clothes when I’m out in Dallas visiting the folks, and recently arrived in this country, which I was a bit disappointed about. Anyways, seeing as I was in London over Christmas, I decided to head out to Westfield and go and check out one of two Hollister stores currently open in the UK (another one is due to open soon at Bluewater in Kent).

It was nightmare – and that’s putting it politely. The photo above is actually Hollister from the outside, with a queue of people that passed the Nike Store next door, waiting to get in. Now that’s fair enough I guess, it’s not their fault if the store is so crowded people have to queue.

Yet not only was the store ridiculously packed on the inside, the service was unbelievably atrocious. After I’d battled to get to the back of the store to check out shirts, I stood at the changing rooms for five minutes before asking someone whether they were open. No, those rooms were not open. So I headed across to the other side fo the changing rooms, where as I waited for twenty minutes to try some stuff on, the queue behind me grew to 14 people.

There were three members of staff looking after three changing cubicles in that area, so why didn’t they just open up the other changing room area as well?

I decided I’d take the shirts, and went to queue to pay. It’s a sign of how mobbed the shop was that by the time I got to the end of the queue, I’d set off the alarms at the exit to the shop with the shirts I was trying to pay for. On my way up the queue, I counted how many people were in it. 37. Thirty seven!

This rather blurred photo doesn’t really do the queue justice. But the queue goes further than the bright light at the back of the photo.

All in all, I walked straight in and picked two shirts up, tried them on and paid for them. That took me over an hour.

Now Hollister can probably get away with this, and their higher prices which is what drives me insane. They must have raked the money in that day, so what incentive is there for them to improve their service?

The only upside to the whole experience was the unbelievably hot girl serving behind the counter.

The Westfield London shopping centre opened on Friday. It’s the largest urban shopping centre in Europe, and right across the road from Television Centre, so me and my mate Charlie Brown went to check it out on Friday afternoon (after work of course).

I am annoyed that after Abercrombie, Hollister is now opening shops in the UK. Boo! I buy a lot of clothes there when I am out in Dallas – mainly just t-shirts and polo shirts, but now everyone is going to be wearing them. There is a Hollister in Westfield. So although I was annoyed about them coming to the UK, I was thinking I might drop some cash there anyway. It was not to be however…

The Hollister store (above) was not open yet. So double suck time. It does look bigger than the ones in Dallas though. Hollister have also opened a UK commerce site, which uses some techy system to work out where you are ordering from, and prices accordingly (i.e. doubles US costs). It’s a bit annoying in two respects. First off, postage to the UK is expensive (£20, although this includes duty and VAT fees), and secondly, I can’t order clothes now to be delivered to my parent’s house in Dallas that they can bring home.  Anyway, it looks like I am now going to have to get my clothes in Ruehl when I’m in the US, as at least there aren’t any of them here yet.

As for Westfield London, I like it. It’s super enormous, but the best thing is that there are loads of shops there that are new to me, and that I hadn’t seen before. Like Cos. I can’t think of anymore right now, but there were some others. Charlie and I were there for two hours looking round, but it honestly felt like 20 minutes. I also managed for once to go into All Saints and not buy anything.

If you are in London, definitely go and check out Westfield London, it’s worth it just for the sheer scale of it. However, I did think people were going a bit over the top. There was an orchestra playing and a fashion show (see pic above) and everyone was just standing gawking at it. It’s a shopping centre people, that’s all!

I was in London yesterday for a quick visit, meeting two presenters I’m hoping will come and work in Northern Ireland on a summer series. I managed a quick trip to Regent Street, where I was a bit dismayed to see that American clothes retailers are arriving. Banana Republic opens in Spring 2008. Part of the Gap group, I’m not fussed about this one to be honest cos I think their men’s clothes are really dull and boring. However I was extremely annoyed to find out what is already open next door to where BP is going….

Armani Exchange! Where I get all my cool jackets when I’m out in Dallas! So this means everyone will be eventually walking round in the same clothes as me which totally sucks big time. This globalisation has to stop! Booooooo!

I was in London on Friday for work, so took the opportunity to stay over and do some quick shopping as well. I made my first visit to Abercrombie’s first store in the UK, in Burlington Gardens, just off Saville Row.

My thoughts? Well it is enormous for a start – much bigger than any stores I’d visited in the US. It’s a bit more modern as well in that it’s very dark. Someone else that’s been described it as being like a nightclub, and I think that description is pretty spot on.

The range was pretty good, service was good too, but I have to say the prices are very steep compared to the US. Hoodies were £80, t-shirts as much as £40. Sure rents are higher over here, but does that really justify doubling costs?

Interesting to note as well what Mike Kramer, Abercrombie’s CFO, said about international pricing in a recent conference call….

We do understand that there’s going to be a cost increase related to occupancy. We also understand there will be a cost increase related to payroll in certain areas. But we also believe that there will be something to offset that and that is our pricing and what we will be able to price our product as compared to what you are actually seeing in U.S. dollars here domestically.

Rip-off Britain yet again!

Well my invite must have got lost in the post, but yesterday Abercrombie opened their first UK store – in Saville Row in London. I’ll need to check it out next time I’m over.

They’ve also opened a UK specific website – here, and pricing (which seems quite steep compared to US prices) now include import duty etc, so you shouldn’t have any nasty suprises when the postman turns up. That must mean they’re still shipping online orders from the US though which seems a bit weird.