Press
"Woman behind a fashion revolution"
ONE has only to look at Clery's new window displays under the ballooning yellow canopies to see that a fashion revolution has happened here overnight.
The woman behind the revolution is Mrs. Beatrice Marcroft, an elegant blonde with 15 years as a fashion buyer and co-ordinator behind her, plus experience as a model before that.
It was Mrs. Marcroft who created a long succession of in-store shops in Switzers - from the Henry White and Young and Gay boutiques to Jaeger, Image and Louis Feraud. She too was the woman responsible for the overnight success of Pamela Scott in Grafton St.
"But the Clery's job is a much bigger challenge than any of those - because they've never really had fashion as such here before", she said.
"I was given no detailed briefing - just told that they wanted a new fashionable image while keeping the store's good value. In other words, I knew I had to please Clery's old customers while gaining some new ones".
When she first came into the store last March, Beatrice Marcroft spent two weeks on the fashion floor just watching who bought what and finding out what else they might want.
"I noticed that by far the largest turnover was in the larger sizes - mostly the very large sizes, going up to size 30, which is very, very big".
"So naturally my first job was to cater for this clientele, but to give them something more fashionable and flattering than they had been offered to date".
"So I got two Irish designers, David Simmons and Michael Jacobs to design some co-ordinated fashions for the larger figure which would be exclusively to Clery's. The result is some lovely hacking jackets and waistcoats with matching tweed or plain skirts, plus velvet jackets in colours to tone with the tweeds".
What further plans have she for the floor?
"Well one pitfall I'm determined to avoid is that of packing to much merchandises into a confined space", she says.
"One thing I'm determined to find space for, though, is small collections by Bill Gibb and Louis Faraud - just a few well chosen garments from each of them, which I'll put on the perimeter rails round these mirrored pillars".
"Then once I've built the departments up and got the worldwide buying pattern for each established, I plan to hand them over to manageress who can then continue buying for themselves, so that I can just co-ordinate and inject the occasional new ideas".
Indeed, one can see that this energetic fashion enthusiast will have to hand over some of her responsibilities soon, if she is not to exhaust herself. Although 50% of her merchandises are Irish, she has been spending more than half her time buying abroad, while building up the new stock.