Photo: Courtesy of Tove Save Story Save this story Save Story Save this story Welcome to the Scoop : a weekly email series in which I quiz fashion insiders on the stories of the week. This will be a way for the Vogue Business community to synthesize and reflect on the latest headlines and get a little inside scoop every Friday.
This week’s guests are Tove co-founders Camille Perry and Holly Wright. I first met Holly and Camille a few years ago through Purple PR’s Lydia Steele. However, I had already found myself doing some wistful shopping on their website a year or so before that. I remember scrolling down the Dresses page and thinking somebody had designed a collection just for me.
It’s one of Tove’s strengths. Holly and Camille have built a London brand steeped in the every woman — or at least the every woman with a stressful city job, maybe a kid or two, and an endless list of things to do. The two met at Topshop — once a mecca for the everygirl — where they both started their careers in the early 2010s and went on to become head of design and head of buying, respectively.
They left Topshop before its closure, launched Tove in 2019, and have since been growing their business slowly and intentionally, following its own needs over industry trends. For instance, they show when it makes sense to do so, and when it doesn’t, they do something else. Today, we are talking about that something else.
Camille: We are opening a residency on Sloane Street in early November. We had a residency in Mayfair this time last year. It was the first time we had a space to meet our customers, and we realized the limitations that come with running a DTC brand when it comes to building that relationship.
How long do you think you will be in Sloane Street?
Camille: This one is meant to go on until the end of January. But we’re hoping that there’s an opportunity for it to continue on further. We put a lot of thought into finding the right space, in the right neighborhood, with the right adjacencies and the right footfall. We’ve been talking to estates for a really long time. The British Fashion Council (BFC) put us in touch with the Cadogan Estate, and this space came up.
How come you went West this time, and didn’t stay in Mayfair?
Camille: Holly and I have spent years trying to figure out the best spot for us. Right now, Sloane Street feels like the buzziest place to be. We loved Mayfair, especially the historical aspect of it, but maybe it’s not the most neighborhoody, so it wasn’t great for discovery. If we had stayed there for a long time, maybe it would have been OK, as we would have built up a reputation.
Holly: In the Sloane Street space, we get incredible brand adjacencies — there are the dress brands like Zimmerman and Erdem, which is important for us. At the same time, in the Mayfair store, the top-performing category was denim, where fit is critical. You really want to come in and compare sizes. So having a wardrobe-based brand with a huge denim business like Toteme across the road will also hopefully be beneficial and give us a lot of learnings.
Rendering of the new residency in Sloane Street.
If Tove was a person, where would she live?
Holly: I mean, she’s all over London. But when looking at the postcodes in our data, there’s definitely a pull to the west and southwest as a primary. Then it kind of scatters everywhere; there’s a lot of North and East for sure.
What needs to happen for you guys to be able to turn the residency into…