Browns Focus relaunches to champion new designers

Luxury designer fashion retailer Browns is today, 6 May, relaunching its Browns Focus concept in store and online to support and nurture new design talent.

The line-up for "Series One" includes womenswear designers Commission, Conner Ives, MAXIMILIAN and Mariah Esa alongside menswear designers Bianca Saunders, Labrum, LUEDER, Saul Nash and TSAU.

Browns Focus was originally launched as a separate standalone shop on South Molton Street (where the original Browns boutique was founded in 1970) in 1997, as an incubator for new talent globally - championing designers such as Christopher Kane, Simone Rocha and Hussein Chalayan. The store closed in 2017.

Both the new Browns Brook Street store and Browns East now have dedicated Browns Focus areas, and there will be several features for the relaunched concept on the brownsfashion.com homepage.

Browns plans to introduce more new designers every year, who will create exclusive collections for Browns Focus. Series One launches as a program of digital creative experiences and exclusive capsules produced in collaboration with the designers, championing both their products and personal stories.

Womenswear and Menswear Buying Director, Ida Petersson, commented: “Emerging talent is at the heart and soul of everything we do at Browns and by reintroducing Browns Focus as a platform for collaboration, we aim to showcase not only the designers but also their communities. I’m immensely excited about this line up, each designer brings something completely unique to the table and are true stars both today and for tomorrow.”

All designers involved have been given a free reign on their collections and the creative concepts resulting in a series of visuals, written word and sound that are intrinsically representative of each talent.

Joe Brunner, Menswear Buyer Next Generation at Browns, added: “What was arguably just as important, if not more important, was that they needed to have a voice on topics such anti-racism, social inequality and mental health. These conversations are incredibly important to Browns and we wanted to be a vehicle to drive these narratives forward through our community.”