"Thanks, It Has Pockets": Why M&S Has Always Been the Best Brand in Britain

Looking at M&S’s incredibly chic fashion show at Silverstone in last Friday, the question was not “How are those models on the tarmac without actually melting, are they ok?” but how has nobody held a fashion show there before? The girlies love Drive to Survive on Netflix. 

It turns out M&S and F1 know a bit more than this: 75 per cent of new F1 fans are female, and we make up 42 per cent of its global fanbase. That’s an ideal audience for M&S to target – and it’s incredibly telling that it knew that and that its clothes were the perfect fit. Watching the models – a variety of sizes, races, ages and genders, but all at pitstop levels of beautiful – the clothes just looked incredibly right. Cinched jackets, balloon suit trousers, satin shorts, linen suits, immaculate styling. Silverstone, Goodwood, Monaco, M&S.  

This partnership comes hot on the heels of the retailer’s livestreamed Ibiza catwalk show in May, watched by an astonishing 26 million people online. To put that into perspective, the social listening tool Visibrain put London Fashion Week’s interactions at 10 million from over 128,000 users in its entirety. That’s an awful lot of customers showing up for good old M&S, and who want to see what they’re doing next. 

That combination of stylish Ibiza and familiar M&S is embodied by choosing Amelia Dimoldenberg as host, who, as the creator of Chicken Shop Date and host of every awards red carpet worth its salt, is arguably the presenter of the moment – and one of the wittiest. It’s telling that Marks brought in someone with personality to present its clothes rather than keeping its customers at a distance. That simply isn’t what its customers want anymore – less aspiration, more embodiment and quality. And its prices tell the same story. Items are keenly priced for quality and accessibility, with a 100% leather jacket in the F1 Dressed to Thrill range coming in at £280, an Autograph gold cupro-viscose balloon-cuffed trouser at £70, and a ruched red cotton midaxi dress at £36.

And if Ibiza felt like a statement, consider this: M&S has just confirmed its debut at London Fashion Week this autumn, marking 100 years in fashion with a see now buy now collection streamed globally and available in stores the same day. At some point it stops being a moment and starts being a movement. 

It’s really time to stop being surprised at M&S and accept them as a cultural barometer, meeting women of all ages and life stages where they are, and recognising what they need. Every couple of years without fail, someone discovers M&S and writes a public service announcement about it as though they’ve found a second Bayeux Tapestry hidden in their Google searches. Good, I think, not even bothering to be magnanimous about it because I’m just simply thrilled that they’ve finally joined the party. 

I have saved eBay searches for beloved M&S earrings from 2012. I’ve lost count of how many slouchy mohair-mix cardigans I’ve bought from their 80s line, St Michael. And every winter, I live in their straight-legged cords, which sit at the ideal ankle boot length on my gangly giraffe legs, and right to the floor on everyone else. 

Whenever M&S goes through a slump, my friend Helen – she’s a film journalist for Empire, if you want to get hold of her, M&S – thinks quite seriously about pitching their PR department a campaign called “Thanks, it has pockets.” The point being that Marks and Sparks is often stylish, usually elegant and always practical. When I rode across the Thar Desert in Rajasthan on horseback (a sentence I have always wanted to say out loud but never dared to for fear of rightly being thrown off a cliff), its no-nonsense, no-VPL knickers were the only pants I dreamed of packing. My husband and I have shared a sock drawer for over a decade – we have the same size 9 feet and penchant for the bright, block-coloured M&S multipacks. 

And that’s the thing that M&S remembers with its cool location-based catwalk shows. All the snazz and pizazz come matched with clear photos of what item you’re actually looking at – no cough-Zara-cough pretzel posing next to a bin here, thank God – and clever styling suggestions that give the clothes additional spark rather than any depressing moment of wondering why it doesn’t look like it did on the model. These are ideas to help rejuvenate clothes rather than being overly trend-led. Everything feels right and current, but enduring. 

M&S is woven into the very fabric of our lives, and it’s stayed that way because the Marks customer is at the heart of what it does. That, in this insane shopping landscape, it continues to survive and thrive is thanks to the hard work – and water-divining fashion sense – of its team. And if there’s anyone out there from M&S reading this: 1) You’re doing great, but do get in touch with Helen about that pockets idea. And 2) Could we have an extra-long leg navy jumbo cord next winter? It would look amazing at the next Silverstone shoot and, more crucially, on me. 

Shop the Marks and Spencer Silverstone edit now.