13/09/2008

Hi again from Studio 8

The season has now kicked off and we have our usual selection of fantastic brands as well as a few new ones.

The big news is Limi Feu launching is our South African stores. Limi Feu is the daughter of iconic designer Yohji Yamamoto and she has definitely inherited the family design gene. Her collection is an avant-garde work of genius, with incredible use of fabrics and materials and is now available in our Cape Town and Johannesburg stores.  We are expecting big things from Limi.

Our Primrose Hill, London store is forging ahead with its menswear collections and is now stocking a superb label from Portland, USA called Rogues Gallery, as well as quirky English menswear from Oliver Spencer. We also have Haversack from Japan (this label was recently voted best new label at New York Fashion Week). Superga shoes from Italy. Next season we will also be stocking Yohji’s new diffusion line ‘Coming Soon’ as well as gorgeous knitwear from Italy by Roberto Collina.

As always we have Marithe (we never get bored of this original and clever collection), High, Ash shoes, Belstaff in South Africa (we wish we could get this for London) and Elm. We have also taken the beautiful American label Graham & Spencer on board. We seem to have a thing for Spencers at the moment!

Marcelle and I are gearing ourselves up to walk the walk in Paris next month (thankfully not on the catwalks), to see every brand under the sun, in the search to bring you perfect fashion.

Lots of love and dahlings you look positively gorge in that outfit today.

Xxxxx

Simon

25/06/2007
Interview with Marcelle for The Times Newspaper.

Where are the shops?
83 Regents Park Road, Primrose Hill, London NW1 8UY Tel +442074490616
Shop 33 - Hyde Park Corner Johannesburg Tel +27113254255
St Albans on Cavendish, Cavendish Street Cape Town Tel +27216831666

What kind of shops are they?
Great places to visit and for finding beautiful separate pieces which have
been hand picked from all over the world.

Who runs them?
I run the Cape Town shop, Jane the Johannesburg store and my son, Simon the
London store.   But we naturally could not run the stores without the
fantastic teams we are lucky enough to be surrounded by in each city.

Tell us the story behind the name of the shops.
We opened originally in Cape Town in a beautiful Victorian cottage on No 8
Cavendish Close.   When I saw that other boutiques were emulating our unique
layered style, we changed the name to Studio 8 the origin!

When did it open?
We opened our first store nearly 15 years ago.

What were you doing before?
I've been involved in fashion in one form or another for many years and
before that I was a theatrical agent.

What do you plan to do after?
Or,  What are you future plans for the shops?
Be carried out in a coffin!    So far all my dreams have become reality.   I
always wanted a shop in Primrose Hill London and we opened Studio 8 on the
hill just over two years ago and our plans (my son, Simon, runs the business
over there) are to open up more branches wherever the mood takes us.

What items/brands do you stock?
We change fairly regularly but at the moment our most fabulous sellers are
Marithe & Francois Girbaud and a new label from Italy called High, Dosa,
T-Bags and Juicy Couture from LA, by Malene Birger from Denmark and Ash
Shoes.   We are just about to take delivery of two new labels, Twenty8Twelve
by Savannah and Sienna Miller and Belstaff which is fronted by Kate Moss.

Who designed your shops?
My late husband, Tony, who sadly passed away in May last year, was my
business partner and greatest champion and he was involved in the design of
all three shops.   We decided in each case on the mood we wanted and each
shop evolved organically from there.

Describe your customers?
Our customers are international, independent, intelligent woman of all ages.
They are businesswomen and house executives, mothers and daughters, sisters
and wives, partners and professionals, women saving the earth and the
elephants.    Our youngest customer is twelve and the oldest a very very
stylish eighty three.

Describe your shops in a sentence?
Warm, welcoming, eclectic with beautiful clothes for every day.

What is your soundtrack in the shops?
Cassette (the South African Music Award winning rockband of which my son,
Jonathan,is the front man and my Johannesburg manager, Jane, the
keyboardist) plus my current favorite Amy Winehouse and all R & B.