The Eric Musgrave Interview: how Caroline Attwood is growing the quiet consistency of Margaret Howell

The fashion industry carousel spins ever faster, with more product, cheaper product and brash branding dominating the agenda for many companies and their consumers.

In complete contrast, Margaret Howell follows a much more considered course, doing what it’s done for almost 55 years – making restrained, practical and beautiful clothes for men and women who appreciate restrained, practical and beautiful clothes.

The most consistent of British designer brands was started in 1970 by Margaret Howell, assisted by her then-husband Paul Renshaw. Howell started making high-quality men’s shirts, which turned out to be popular with women too. Now aged 78, Howell remains design director and standards setter for her creation, which today embraces clothing, accessories, homewares and furniture.

Complementing the original Margaret Howell Mainline is MHL, which provides a more casual, more workwear-inspired offer.

A 10-minute film from 2020 by Howell and Emily Richardson enchantingly captures the spirit and approach of the designer that permeates the company. Watch it here .

Since 1990 the London-based company has had Japanese owners. Today it is part of Tokyo-based multi-brand retail group TSI Holdings and the brand continues to be, to use a well-worn phrase, Big in Japan, where it has 70+ shops and has a turnover of around the equivalent of £100m.

The UK and rest of the world business, which generates sales of around £18m, is run from London. A profit (before tax) of around £500,000 in 2022 became a loss of around £400,000 in 2023 due to rising costs and currency fluctuations.

Since February this year the managing director has been Caroline Attwood, the successor to Richard Craig, who retired after a 33-year career with Margaret Howell.

A former CEO of British accessories brand Ally Capellino, commercial director at premium accessories firm Anya Hindmarch and head of sales at Mulberry, she brings almost 20 years of experience in the relevant market segment to her role. Further back in her career Attwood worked in kidswear and menswear in the USA and in the Middle East – an impressive CV for someone who started as an allocator for cotton tops and jersey bottoms in Dorothy Perkins in the mid-1990s.

In the latest Eric Musgrave Interview, our trusty contributor discusses with Attwood the prospects for growth for such a specialised and revered brand as Margaret Howell and wonders why it has taken other parts of the fashion industry so long to wake up to Howell’s sustainable “slow luxury” approach.

How would you describe Margaret Howell to someone who doesn’t know the brand?

If I was talking to a prospective customer, I’d say we offer beautifully considered clothing, furniture and homewares. There’s a kind of understated confidence about everything. You wear our clothes and just feel comfortable and relaxed. The clothes don’t wear you.

It always starts from a very careful choice of materials, which are always right for the job. It is a lovely, grounded, real approach. Ours are products that last, that function, that can be worn by any age. That has an alternative appeal in such a trend-led world. Trends are not generally a consideration for Margaret.

Once you try on our clothing, you get a new understanding of how special it is. There’s definitely an increased appreciation for clothing like ours. I have met quite a lot of people in our (Wigmore Street, London) flagship who wear only Margaret Howell. If people know the brand, then they really know it.

Margaret Howell menswear

As the first new MD in more than 30 years, what specific brief have you been given by the Japanese owners?

Essentially, I’m here to lead on the key changes we need to make to take the business forward. In 2025 it will become a 55-year-old business. How do we set it up for the next 50 years? It is such a wonderful company, so how do we evolve it?

Both our UK and Japan teams want to maintain the soul and the consistency of the brand. Consistency really has been the backbone of the business over the years, and we still have to harness that.

One of the real strengths I saw when I visited Japan recently was the shops over there. They are really in sync with what we do here. That’s a credit to the respect the Japanese owners have for this business. It’s such an important relationship.

In terms of our UK collections, our Japanese partners buy into some of it, where it’s relevant in terms of the climate. But because they have 70+ stores and we have 10, they develop more styles, which we approve. It all forms a nice circle.

What specific challenges did you face taking over in February?

Primarily, it was about getting energy back in the business. A lot of projects had stalled because of COVID. There were quite a few back office and infrastructure projects, that I’ve handled in previous roles, which needed to be picked up again. I’m a great believer that if you get the back office solid, you can build on it.

Since I arrived, we’ve re-platformed our e-commerce site and we’ve moved our warehouse operation to a third-party. We now have a bonded facility, which solves the long-standing post-Brexit duty problem that all UK companies have had to deal with.

I also had to address any need for change management. We’ve got lots of people who have been here for a long, long time, which is wonderful, but a new MD inevitably signals change. It’s been a delicate balance of how to manage the needs of the people with the future needs of the business.

What is Margaret’s role these days?

Margaret is design director, so she’s in quite a lot of the time and still provides the direction for the collection. She still has an amazing eye, and it is as keen as ever. And obviously she provides everybody with a huge amount of inspiration.

After almost 55 years, could Margaret Howell be described as a cult brand?

We probably wouldn’t term it like that. It’s more a brand that people just gravitate to when they have an appreciation of certain things and find a connection to our product. As I said earlier, if people know it, they really know it.

The aesthetic and ethics of the company seem hardly to have changed since 1970. Is that a plus point?

I think it’s a huge plus point. Our ethics really reflect Margaret and who she is as a person. She’s true and grounded. Why would that change? You don’t change your ethics if you live by them. It’s all rooted in her love of tough, good, honest clothing.

We have an amazing museum-standard archive of over 3,000 pieces, looked after by a highly-trained archivist. It’s an amazing resource and you can see how the look has evolved over the decades.

With buzz words like sustainability, slow fashion, making locally, buying best and so on, flying about, has some of the fashion industry caught up with what Margaret Howell has been doing since the start?

Absolutely. Our approach is a reflection of Margaret and I think somewhat of her generation. It’s not really a new idea to look after things, mend things, reuse things, pick wisely, make choices for the long term that serve you well. Having no waste is not a new idea. It used to be done out of necessity. People didn’t have a lot, so they looked after things. What’s happening now within some of the industry is also an act of necessity. People realise we can’t continue down the present road and therefore we need to be more considerate and mindful.

We continue to improve what we offer. We’ve just launched a Care & Repair service with online repairs platform Sojo.

We have an amazing team here working on sustainability. We’re part of a lot of industry groups trying to do the right thing and move in the right direction. We’ve just published online our second annual report on our progress. It’s a serious document. We have decarbonisation goals, and we are working with the design team to make the right choices. It’s not an insignificant thing.

Margaret Howell womenswear

The approach means your prices are, relatively speaking, expensive. This season, for example, a women’s heavy wool overcoat is £1,695, while a men’s classic white poplin shirt is £365 in your Mainline collection. Do these price levels concern you?

Relatively is exactly the right word. There are plenty of brands that are more expensive, and people choose what they spend their money on. It’s really important we let people know that if they are purchasing from us, they can trust the product, rely on it. Our fabrics are very much sourced from specialist suppliers, our make is really exceptional, we don’t have crazy markups, so the price is a fair reflection of the value and materials and work that goes into the product.

We do, as you’ve mentioned, have our MHL line as well as our Mainline. The original idea of MHL wasn’t to have a cheaper line. It was to look at tougher fabrics and more workwear-inspired pieces. MHL is more about a different choice of fabrics, more cotton-based, it’s more casual and so pricing reflects that.

Pricing definitely is something that concerns us. All natural raw materials have shot up and labour costs have increased. So, it’s a balance between looking at product and having a fair value, a fair price. That’s why, when somebody comes into our shops, it’s so important that they meet staff who are incredibly knowledgeable and informed and passionate about the quality of product, which they are.

Is there scope to grow the Margaret Howell business significantly?

We are a nice-sized business, although not a massive business. There are plenty of people out there that would love the brand, but don’t know about it. We have never been into chasing sharp growth. It’s been about slower sustainable growth, which will continue. However, I certainly do think there is some stretch for us.

The quiet, considered, under-the-radar approach has up to now been our marketing strategy. We’ve just re-platformed from the website, which means we have access to a wider reach and more potential customers. Also, we have a very small wholesale reach for a company of our size. There’s opportunity there, more with independent shops most likely. And we do, for example, have a lovely business with Liberty in London.

A challenge for every business trying to operate responsibly and not over-produce, of course, is how to sell more product when we’re regularly saying, buy this and it’ll last you forever, but that’s also where new customers come in.

How often do you do collaborations?

It’s been very sporadic and most often involves people coming to us. This season we have a collaboration with Japanese sportswear company Mizuno. It has to feel right and that’s something the team look at very carefully.

My personal opinion is you really have to know why you’re doing a collaboration. It can take quite a lot of energy and time. Suddenly everybody’s focus is on the collaboration. I’m always saying, consider input versus output. Is it a marketing thing? Are we trying to get a new customer group? Or is it a commercial thing? Ideally it’s all of those, but you must understand from the beginning what you want to get out of it.

We’re doing an interesting collaboration with Blēo, a new Danish colour house that is working with lots of influential people in the design world. They asked Margaret to curate the colour palette for a range of paint, inspired by her love of coastal areas.

On homeware, we collaborate with lots of makers and artists, like ceramicist Nicola Tassie, with whom we have just shot a short film.

With many of these projects, there’s not a formula. It’s instinct.

How important to you is London Fashion Week?

We did LFW catwalk shows for years but I believe it stopped because of COVID. It didn’t feel right to go back to the shows for various reasons, so we now make a static presentation in our beautiful store in Place de la Madeleine during Paris Fashion Week, which a lot of press come to see. We retain good connections with the British Fashion Council, and we’re involved in things with them on the sustainability and business side.

How do you attract new, younger customers?

We have older customers who have grown with us because they have been shopping with us for 30-plus years, MHL brings in a slightly younger customer, and we have dedicated MHL shops, such as in New Cavendish Street in London’s West End.

With the advent of social media and digital marketing, the sort of things we’ve been very quiet on in the past, there are now opportunities to reach out to a lot of different customer groups to test who might be interested.

Our offices are behind the Wigmore Street flagship shop, so I’m lucky to be in the shop a lot, seeing the customers. Our younger customers tend to be in the artistic industries, 30-to-40-year-olds who are artistic directors, architects, people with a creative mindset. We need to build on those. That’s our next job. How do we find and talk to those like-minded customers the brand might appeal to?

Do you actually know who your customers are?

I always joke about this because with most brands I’ve worked in, you have your vision of the dream customer, but when you do the research the answers are somewhat different. Our individual stores have loyal customers and the staff literally know their size and what they bought before. But generally, we’ve got work to do on the data side of that.

We will be able to join up our shops with our ecommerce so there’ll be one view of the customer. If you shop online, then come in the store, we’ll be able to see what you’ve previously bought. There’s a lot of technology to enable data analysis, but we are also going to go old-school and run some focus groups.

We have a lot of very famous people who shop with us, but we won’t be looking for celebrity endorsements. That’s not why people shop with us.

Your womenswear sizing range seems relatively limited, not always going to 16, let alone anything larger…

That’s one of the things we’ve looked at since I’ve been here. For spring-summer 25 women’s, all categories will go from 6 to 16. Previously it was only offered in certain categories. And on men’s we’ve shifted the sizing down because the feedback said it was coming up very large. Our shapes are not body-hugging, so there is a generous cut about them.

Margaret Howell, Wigmore Street, London

All your UK shops are in London. Are you planning to open elsewhere?

We are pretty London-centric, that’s true, and I would love to see some stores further north. I know we have a customer base there. We might look at doing some pop-ups to test some areas.

There are lots of cities in the UK that can be interesting, for Margaret Howell. That’s where more of a wholesale angle comes in and, to be honest, that’s our next step.

Outside the UK we are under-represented in the US, which is our second online presence, so we have a customer base there we’d like to serve.

While online is not the same shopping experience because it’s nice to touch and feel clothes, at least with our online you know you can be confident in the quality and fit. We do an amazing thing where every product has its full-size details on the website.

What is Margaret Howell as a company good at?

That’s simple. We’re just really good at making beautiful clothes, in beautiful fabrics that are always fit for purpose. Margaret’s always been amazing with her fabric choice. The strength of the company has been that sort of consistency. Also, we’re a really nice place to work.

How do you sum up the future prospects for Margaret Howell?

They’re great. It’s a company that is as interesting and as relevant as it was when Margaret started it in the 1970s. In every decade, it’s been such a clever combination of modern and functional clothing. With everything that’s going on in the wider fashion world, we’re really poised to be a company that, if you want a white shirt, you think Margaret Howell. If you want a great winter coat or jacket, you think of Margaret Howell. They should be the pieces everyone aspires to have in their wardrobe.

With the focus on sustainability and the need for change in that area, we’re already in the right space. Of course, there’s always going to be high fashion, but if people are spending money to invest in a piece, they want to trust it’s going to hold together and we believe that’s where we can continue to be important. I’m excited to lead the future of Margaret Howell.