Get some Spring in your step with Mary & Clarks

Shop! Mary Portas on Kurt Geiger

The shoe business on the British high street has changed beyond all recognition in the past few years. Sweaty stalwarts such as Barratts, Dolcis and Shellys (oh, I never wanted to be a Saturday girl in one of those) have gone into administration while Topshop, Zara and New Look have picked up the slack when it comes to offering affordable, catwalk-inspired footwear to stylish young things. At the other end of the scale, luxury brands such as Prada have made significant inroads into the wardrobes of professional women, while Christian Louboutin and Manolo Blahnik have achieved almost mythical status for their sexy statement heels. But what about all that ground in between? In the same time frame, two stand-alone fashion shoe retailers (as opposed to multi-brand ones) have come to prominence on the high street: Clarks and Kurt Geiger. Clarks, as British as Hovis and almost 200 years old, has repositioned itself as a more design-oriented business, selling to the entire family and covering most occasions. Kurt Geiger focuses on higher-priced (but not too high) sexy fashion shoes for women who want the cachet of designer footwear but don’t want to spend silly money. I’d always wondered whether the Germanic-sounding Herr Geiger actually existed other than in the minds of the firm’s marketing department, and the company’s own website provides little enlightenment in its lacklustre history section. Turns out he was an Austrian entrepreneur who came to England in his early twenties, in 1963, and opened his first store on London’s Bond Street, which suggests the brand has always had high-fashion ambitions. Now American-owned, Kurt Geiger has more than 50 UK branches, including a couple of swish concept stores, plus department-store concessions, and has become very successful at following (some might say copying) catwalk trends and delivering them to an aspirational market. I’m in Glasgow to launch my own shop for women on buzzy Buchanan Street and, as I’ve been told there’s a Kurt Geiger just up the road, I decide to pop in.

Read more