Last week sometimes felt like standing in the midst of a triumphant hosiery and condiment-themed ticker-tape parade. I’m referring to the deluge of reports about the success of Marks & Spencer. M&S has topped the FTSE 100 leaderboard. It’s reported to be in its strongest financial health since 1997. The food is considered a treat during the cost-of-living crisis. The Zoe Gut Shot sparked a waiting list. Sienna Miller has fronted clothing campaigns, looking winsome in cable-knit. Young women are turbo-boosting the profits by buying M&S lingerie.
No wonder chief executive Stuart Machin talks of “wind in our sails”. What a way to celebrate being 140 years old. You could almost forgive the disquieting “bum-boosting pants” range introduced earlier this year (effectively a padded bra for the posterior: what fresh hell is this?). Even in relatively recent times, there were concerns about M&S, but all indications show that it’s out of the doldrums.
All of which made me feel glowy and happy. Hurrah for M&S! Then a sudden sacrilegious thought occurred: why? It was as if a dim lightbulb started flickering above my head. Why am I emotionally invested, and in this doting, painfully over-involved kind of way?
Why are British people so fond of certain brands (M&S, John Lewis)? Some shops somehow encapsulate our essential Britishness, as if we’ve almost been hypnotised into a state of heightened brand loyalty. I know we’re a nation of shopkeepers, but isn’t it a bit weird to care about the fortunes of a multinational business concern that just wants our cash? That, when push comes to commercial shove, simply wants us to shell out for its snazzy crewnecks or juicy sliced mango.
This isn’t meant as a slur on M&S: it’s a shop, it sells stuff, and it does it well. Still, it’s strange how blasphemous, even taboo, it feels to even mildly party poop the celebrations. Part of me feels like I’m committing a thought crime – an act of anti-state heresy that could potentially result in the revocation of my British citizenship.
Not everyone is so enamoured. Patrick Grant, the clothing entrepreneur and presenter of TV’s The Great British Sewing Bee, recently criticised M&S’s Autograph socks, describing them as “sort of synthetic-y and flabby and bloody horrible”.
Personally speaking, I could just be showing my consumer age. It’s known that older people (nitpicking middle-aged miseries like myself) are less susceptible to brand messaging (though it turns out that the younger generations are also becoming ad-resistant).
For many, though, M&S is famously one of the national treasure super-brands, with a hefty dollop of subliminal patriotism thrown in. I’ve got past form for this kind of thing myself (call it retail sentimentality). As much as I always knew that brands weren’t my “friends”, if I wasn’t fretting over the likes of M&S, I was lamenting the tragic collapse of Woolworths. But how far do you take it? It seems one thing to mourn Woolies (the people, the jobs, the human cost); rather different (a bit “glorious leader”) to start feeling warm inside when things go well for a corporate entity.
A cynical soul may even question how truly fond the British public is of any brand, not just M&S. Is it a myth, a heartwarming story we tell ourselves when it’s all hypocritical, disingenuous hot air? In truth, we’re as fickle as the next nation of consumers, liable to quickly turn our backs on M&S if the cauliflower cheese doesn’t pass muster or if there are too many frumpy woollens in the autumn collection. In brutal commercial terms, how far does public goodwill stretch? After all, as was exhaustively pointed out at the time, and for all the weepy public outpouring, Woolies fell because most of us hadn’t walked through the doors to so much as stick a scoop in the pick’n’mix for years.
What of the fabled British brand loyalty then? Then there’s the wider picture, and probably the real reason I can’t help but sense shadows creeping over the sunlit retail vista. It’s the cold, hard fact that M&S’s well-earned success is wildly unrepresentative of how the rest of the high street (actual and figurative) continues to struggle.
Let’s face it, it’s still bleak out there. According to a recent Mazars report, more than 2,000 retailers have gone bust in the past year. While there’s government action over “high street vacancy”, it doesn’t feel enough.
Brands are still buckling, including the Body Shop and Ted Baker. Even the M&S fightback was built on cutbacks, store closures (though sometimes these were relocations), job losses and restructuring.
For all my huffing, puffing and venting, and for the staff’s sake, I’d hate for M&S to be in trouble: it would be like the ravens leaving the retail tower. Still, while all is bliss in its hallowed aisles, would it be possible to spread some of the affection and support around?
It serves us to remember that the M&S turnaround doesn’t tell the whole story of the British high street.
• Barbara Ellen is an Observer columnist
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